One of Two Planets Dancing
by PoeticThighs
Summary: Sequel to "By King's Cross Station" but can be read alone. 5 years after the 2nd War, Draco's self-imposed exile from the Wizarding community and its corrupt government comes to an end as Hermione is blackmailed into completing Andromeda's last request.
1. To be Made of Glass

**A/N:** It has been far too long. This is a sequel to the story "By King's Cross Station, I Sat Down & Wept" which was completed an age ago. I don't know if many of the readers for that story are still around. I hope so! It's always good to have readers!

In the previous story, Draco and Hermoine found their paths inevitably diverge, but in this story they come back to each other again and try resolve issues that have been left lingerng from the past. Am I doing a bad job of selling it? Probably. R&R, I always use fanfiction as a base for my own original fiction and like having constructive criticism to work off.

Thank god for Tumblr, otherwise I would not have had the inspiration to sit down and fulfil this sequel which has been LONG overdue.

**EDIT:**  
**1. **The title is taken from _Bat for Lashes_' song _Two Planets_. For the time being, it's a working title until I find a better suited title. However, for now, it does its job for the plot so far. The song _Daniel_ by the aforementioned band also helped kickstart this fiction.

**2.** _(2/9/10)_ Got rid any reference to Bellatrix still alive (a mistake made which is explained fully in the next chapter's AN).

* * *

**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**One: To Be Made Of Glass**

He took out a parchment and swirled the quill in a nearby inkwell for sometime, thinking of what to say. In truth, he had nothing of real importance to say, but the foreign owl had long outstayed its welcome waiting for a reply to carry back to its owner. And Draco was done cleaning up after the rude, impatient creature.

_B,_

He paused, pursing his lips whilst stroking his chin with the quill.

'_What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?'_

_There is nothing to do but read these days._

He paused again, mulling over this.

_Better company than humans._

_& in answer to your question: no. I think I shall stay where I am. _

_D._

"Now kindly fuck off," He murmured to the departing bird, his lips gripping onto a cigarette as he fumbled around in his pockets searching blindly for a lighter. He wasn't in the mood to divulge any further details. He liked to keep people at a distance. It was to be expected.

When he had lit his cigarette, he shook his head. Oh, he had wanted to, he always wanted to, but never could bring himself to ask. _How is Hermione, do you speak to her, is she okay, what is she up to?_ He was too ashamed and afraid. Draco had spent so long over the last five years trying to take at least ten steps forward in his life, he did not want to risk any vulnerable moment to be snapped back three years earlier.

So he did what Draco always did best. He ran.

"Such is life."

Draco Malfoy had been running without rest for the last five years, running physically, mentally and within his soul. It had been a maze of mirrors, in which he caught himself running to and from his reflections like a solid pewter pendulum in motion. Such chasing trapped Draco in an image of himself; he became porcelain complexion, glass skin which condensed when old memories surfaced or when people tried to attach themselves too close to him.

In five years, the glass had cracked, shattered and forced back together again. Draco knew he had picked a losing side to begin with; he always had faith in Dumbledore and his army to defeat Voldemort. Besides, if they didn't succeed, it would only be a matter of time before another group of do-gooders were able to. It took a lot to learn and many atrocities before Draco had the courage to subvert the orders given to him.

She was right. Draco was only ever a little pawn in Voldemort's eyes. So he fought back, inch by inch, wherever possible to try redeem himself. These little acts put him in great danger, warranting his arrest within the Death Eater Circle, but also helped save his life when the war ended and Voldermort was vanquished. Found in a Death Eater prison, malnourished and two days away from death by torture, he was saved, and later given a second chance by the Ministry of Magic after several war crime trials.

Then he became the Ministry's pawn.

Draco had to laugh. After being found innocent of war crimes, he became the wizarding society's enigmatic figure; the public both feared and pitied him at the same time. Oh, he hated it; he hated the fickle nature of public interest. Different papers simultaneously publishing stories of both his demonic acts as well as sympathy stories, detailing his redeeming work for The Order and subsequent resulting torture.

Despite the growing fascination, Draco still had enemies, the volatile of which were Death Eaters who had escaped conviction. They were bitter because Draco was free from the threat of Azkaban. Though the public were fascinated by him, they would do little to protect him so Draco had to do something to protect himself. He knew what was in store for him if he did not protect himself, and he would do anything to avoid it. He withdrew from public life and lived like the rat in self-imposed exile, dodging the gas and traps which were intricately placed around his route in life.

This only wetted the public's appetite, with aurorers following suit as they used Draco as a case study to train future aurorers. The strange melancholic Cain pushed out into the wilderness, stricken from both Heaven and dirty Earth. Draco did feel he was between Purgatory and Hell. Stuck without Virgil as a guide.

The Ministry especially enjoyed Draco's self-imposed exile; he was probably the butt of various government departments. The lowest blow was when he found out he was being used as a case study to examine Aurorer trainees' criminal profiling skills. Deeply untrusting of the new Government that was set up in the wake of war, Draco would spy on the Aurorers at work when out in the field. Less so because he thought he could prove how corrupt the Ministry had become, he could prove that on a hundred counts, but more because he could outwit these Aurorers twice as many times over.

Draco snorted blowing smoke rings, remembering such a session.

"_We do not expect to find him, but we hope to extract new information from witnesses around the area to add to the profile we have of him. As Aurorer trainees, one of the skills you must learn is psychologising criminals, and this is a fantastic opportunity to work on that skill. Draco Malfoy seems intelligent as do many other Death Eaters. Nevertheless, if you get into his mind, we find out he isn't smarter than us; we merely do not understand him. We have to understand him. This is essential to capturing escaped Death Eaters."_

Draco remembered silently laughing then too. It was the cheesiest speech he had heard since he decided to amuse himself by tuning into these weekly feeds on him.

"_Take notes. Draco Malfoy was born June the fifth, he –"_

"_Er, sir, we know all this. The Ministry just never told us exactly what he did during the war, all we know is what the general public knows; rumours. Those files haven't been released to us yet."_

Draco sat himself down at the time, expecting the aurorer to do his usual lengthy (and unauthorised) biography of Draco which was almost always incorrect in certain key events. The aurorer thought he knew all the detals about Draco from interviews with his father and whatever they could get out of his mother. Maybe this was how Draco had survived so long, both out of the Ministry and Voldemort's death clasp: his father and mother still knew nothing about him.

They never knew all the little details. And it was those little tiny details which made all the difference.

Like the small ringlet of hair which escaped the tight bound of the bun she'd wound in her hair as she looked away from him on the second day of his trial. If you missed that detail, you missed the whole picture. Draco wanted to forget the whole scene in his head; he tried hard to abstract the images as to turn them into meaningless canvassed art. To no avail. They became Kandinskys, music and memory trapped in the movement of paint.

He scratched his head before turning the room, murmuring "forget it, forget it" to himself.

**0000000000**

But Snape was right. _Love is so short, forgetting is so long_.

Draco had done so many unforgivable things in the early part of the war. In that time, all he wanted to do was leave a note to her each time the Death Eaters attacked. Sum how shit he felt into one word. Nevertheless, 'Sorry' just seemed too incriminating for both himself and Hermione. When they finally found and murdered her parents, Draco also murdered and drowned her deep inside of him, the initial guilt and torment running out of his body; the will to survive strengthening. He resolved to be as good as he could ever be, so he was able to see as many days as his natural lifespan would permit.

But when would the devil come for him? This desperation to live was counter-balanced with a will to just end it all. Draco could not see the merit in the people who he hid from, couldn't see a point in the farce of a society the Ministry Officials had rebuilt after the war.

He looked to a discarded copy of the Daily Prophet sent to him by Blaise. Draco's wand had been crushed in the final battle, so he had to acquaint himself with a muggle standard of living, having certain magical objects be sent to him by Blaise. It was the state's slap on the wrist; a new wand would not be issued until ten years had passed. _Five more years to go_.

Blaise had the paper charmed it so it would update its content everyday. Draco would be damned if he paid for every single paper, it was complete garbage. But the recluse still needed to know what was going on inside the wizarding society.

He picked the copy up and scanned the front page.

"_Lucius Malfoy is still awaiting trial in Azkaban, but the Kiss is guaranteed…"_ Two years ago, his heart would quicken reading his name, but over the last six months he had become quite accustomed to it. Like writing out a word over and over again until it held no meaning.

"_Narcissa Malfoy is now residing in an insane asylum somewhere in the North-West of England, Ministry sources can confirm..."_

Draco's eyebrow raised: he doubted ministry sources would be happy to confirm that leak of information.

His eyes glanced over to another section.

"_Five years have passed since the Second Wizarding War, but Ministry officials are still to find one of Voldemort's right hand men, Goyle. In the long search for Goyle, the Ministry have lost three aurorers. In a speech given yesterday, the Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt stated 'It is imperative we find Goyle.' Goyle himself is reported to have long-term partner Pansy Parkinson beside him, along with some Death Eater Supporters…"_

Draco stopped reading after the Parkinson comment. He was tired of their pairing of Goyle and Parkinson, when he knew full well she was dead in a ditch somewhere, all they had to do was find the body and they could not even manage that.

Draco thought about the letter he had sent off. Sometimes he wished he had more to say.

Zabini was the only person he corresponded with since his self-imposed exile. Draco trusted him enough to ensure that Zabini would not betray him, surprised that he still kept his word by Draco, as he was already under constant suspicion by the media who kept the whole public under their thumb. They did not trust any Slytherin who were associated with pardoned Death Eater members, which generally meant a good percentage of his age group and of the Slytherin house were watched closely. If they knew Zabini had been fraternising with the Draco, there would be no escape from the media frenzy that would follow. Draco respected Zabini enough to give him his freedom from infamy.

The world had not swapped into Utopia as everyone believed would happen once the Light side won. The world had instead grown dark, wiry with tangled leaves and dangerous insects crawling over the windows. Constantly threatened with black memories, the whole outlook on life had become predatory, the stream sullied with ink, and Ministry Officials, influenced by newspapers, slamming down its fist on any criminal occurrence.

The public had voted on a more conservative government to keep them safe, however the wrong people had been elected, plunging the remaining wizarding folk into a well as they stood on their platforms of power preaching the wrongs or murder whilst performing it. Democratic and opposition parties were quickly losing their voice and within two years, they had forcefully been dissipated into eggshells people stepped on.

Draco thought about it long into morning hours and wondered who had it harder – him dodging the state or the people living in it.

More specifically, he wondered how different his life was to that of Hermione's, finding it strangely funny their perceived roles had inverted completely to that of school; she was now probably living in a manor like a royal whilst he was out roaming the streets. He had no wish to see her ever again, lest be plunged in that strange mixture of love and confusion again.

"Maybe I do." He argued aloud. He shook his head after uttering the statement, "Going mad." He'd began having conversations with himself as of late. Plagued by the company of selves he had peeled off and discarded along the way.

"Such is life." He remarked once more, flinging the cigarette butt outside the window.


	2. The Life Rhythm

Thank you for all the alerts/fav's/reviews.

I'm so sorry this chapter has taken this long to publish online. Work, life, health: what else can be said? It's been a tough week. I think I'm also in need of a beta; though I'm good proofreading work that isn't my own, I have no patience with my own.

Also spotted a glaring mistake in the last chapter- Bellatrix should be dead. The events & people who died in the original HP should be reflected here, apart from the obvious Draco/Hermione storyline and characters thfey affect (Arthur Weasley from previous story & in here, the two remaining Black sisters).

Again, thank you for the positive/constructive responses, for both stories.

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**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Two: The Life Rhythm **

"Sorry, is this a bad time? Have I interrupted –"

"No, no. Not at all," She sighed, letting him in through the door. He had interrupted, but Hermione was glad for the intrusion. The day had been frustrating so far to say the least. She followed him into the main room, sighing again at the sight of mess left by half opened boxes and packing material.

"How's your little project coming along then?" He asked, watching Hermione quickly moved the table where the Penseive lay upon. After doing this she slipped a vial of one memory into a black mokeskin pouch for storage. She was only going to give him a one-line answer; she had become secretive, defensive and withdrawn since the War. Blaise could not chastise her; the War had embedded itself in everyone directly involved. They were not the same people anymore, it was impossible to resume life as though nothing had happened, though many of the Order had tried.

Hermione shook her head, "Not well." She bit the corner of her lip, musing, "But it keeps me occupied, I guess?"

Blaise smiled politely in return, watching as she quickly stowed away the black pouch in a nearby box. Hermione squatted to pick up some of the packing material, sweeping some space into the room.

"You really don't have to do that." Blaise commented before conjuring a sofa for himself.

"Oh, social courtes –" However, before she could finish, he had replaced the packing material in her hand with a brown package. With another quick flick of his wand, he also cleared the room somewhat.

She shook her head smiling, looking up at him as he sat himself down on the sofa, "Thanks."

"No problem. Consider the sofa part of your housewarming gift too."

"Another candle?" Hermione asked as she seated herself cross-legged on the carpet, examining the package before opening it.

"You know me because I know you." He replied whilst she opened it.

She took a sniff of the red candle inside and smiled again, "Thanks. Nothing magical about it?"

"I bought you a sofa, don't expect a whole circus."

"No, I'm grateful." Hermione said as she lit the candle, watching the black steadily run down the wick which momentarily cracked and died as it met the scented wax. Since moving into her new home, she had bought candles and tea lights each week to try illuminate the unfamiliar darkness, and bring fresh manufactured scents she found comforting to a house which did not quite smell like home just yet. The air began to waft cherry and orchids throughout the room.

Candle scents were just an elegant replacement for the cigarette coils of grey and mist Hermione missed deeply from her year of madness. The sense of smell was one which dragged Hermione through minefields of memories; the smell of a certain cologne or brand of cigarette would pull her back into the past as though it was a pensive she was always struggling to stay afloat in. The rocking waves and tugs of tidal waves caused heavy breathing and the loss of balance within her as her eyes fluttered and she remembered the nights she and Malfoy spent together. She did not wonder where he was in the present though; it was always the past for her.

"So how are you, Granger – Speaking of which, has it been finalised yet?"

"Look, I really don't want to talk about it. I'd rather talk about Quidditch." She flatly replied.

"Alright then." Blaise was still stoic as ever.

Hermione shook her head, "Sorry, it's just been non-stop hassle: Wizengamot Admin Services unhappy with something or Skeeter following me around like the plague, writing the outrageous articles of tripe about me."

"Want me to do something about that? I've contacts –"

"Fucking Padma Patil serves as no real contact in the Wizarding media, Zabini."

"_Dating_ Padma."

"Dating? I thought you didn't believe in love."

"I still don't. But I quite like her, and the beauty of humans is we are able to change, no? Maybe she can change my mind on that."

"Interesting development." Hermione commented.

"A logical development. You weren't interested and she is."

Hermione was taken aback by the blunt reply, "Well, I hope it goes well for you both."

"Do you regret not taking me up on my offer?" Another blunt question, but stoically asked nonetheless.

Hermione and Blaise became closer over the five years passed. Both sought a substitute for Draco's absence, and found each other as good consolation. But it could never amount to anything beyond platonic, she could not replace Malfoy. Truth be told, she did not know what Draco's place was in her life any more.

She knew he could never have stopped the Death Eaters from killing her parents. For a time she blamed herself for not being able to cast a more powerful protective charm over them, but she levelled the blame on Malfoy when it suited. After all, he was to blame for all the grief she felt. It was difficult having to attend his trial, catching his gaze for that brief moment. In that brief moment, all the love, grief and fury hit her like a punch to the stomach and she had to turn away.

She looked at her watch before removing it from her wrist. She could hear the rhythm of the time go _click-click-click_. Always. But she was tired, and wished Time granted her time to recuperate before throwing her back into the same boring daily routine which always started without fail, and never ended.

_Click. Click. Click._ The mechanisms and gears that propelled time forward tugged Hermione along unwillingly. If she could, she would stop the enforced clacking and sit still outside of time and in her dreams. Her dreams, good or bad, held a certain rhythm, erratic but alive, like a flame from the candle, smoke from a cigarette.

Somewhere inside the life rhythm goes on.

_Somewhere_. Hermione's had been stifled for a long time, barely audible.

"No." She finally answered. "You know too much about me, and not enough of me. If that makes sense?"

"So why did you marry Weasley? Illogical to do so with that reasoning."

"Because I thought it was the right thing to do. Continue on as if it was how it was meant to be. Like some book, but life isn't like how it is in books, is it?"

"No." He simply answered.

"I'm not the same person I was before …." Unable to use the word, she wafted her hand as though swatting away a fly, "You know… and I tried really hard, Merlin knows I tried. But I'm not that person anymore, and I think I've a hundred miles to travel before I meet myself again in the mirror and recognise myself."

Marrying Ron was a necessary mistake to make. She had to try fit into her soul the shape it was before the day she lent Draco that book. However, the marriage plied her being into misshapes, screaming unhappiness. It took a year to finally listen to that unhappiness and take that leap of faith into the unknown. The unknown she had tried to escape from for five years.

"Well when you do find yourself, Granger, it will either be your finest hour or your biggest disappointment."

**000000000000**

A cup of tea. A muggle film. A quiet Saturday. _Peace_.

Blaise tried to persuade Hermione to come to lunch with him and Padma, but Hermione declined. She wanted to finish unpacking the last of the boxes. Hermione also wanted to keep a low profile until her divorce was old news for Skeeter, tired of seeing her anigamus outside coffee houses and the ministry. Both she and Ron had begged Percy to authorise a restraining order against the woman, but that did not stop the various interns in Skeeter's office pestering them.

A knock on the door brought her out of her musings.

"Who now?" She wondered aloud, setting the cup of tea on the little coffee table before sauntering to the door.

She looked through the peep-hole. A useless addition to the house being a witch and all, but she liked little novelties like that. Hermione was quite defensive when it came to her personal space and her privacy: only the Weasley family and Blaise knew of the location of her new house.

Hermione squinted, the person had turned around, but from what she could see, she recognised the visitor to be a Ministry official. She was hesitant to open the door, unwilling, even.

Hermione never had much faith in the Ministry; however, the current state of affairs worried her greatly. Since the fall of Voldemort, the Ministry found a niche to work upon; pretending to be the perfect democratic government the public could depend on in the midst of attacks from the remaining Death Eaters. Nevertheless, Hermione could see how the perfect Utopia was slowly turning into a disturbing circus show. The general magical public were so afraid of their safety being compromised; they did not see how the Ministry had changed the fear to hatred and took the public's freedom in exchange for protection.

She had already heard of two or three cases in which the government had imprisoned two Slytherin girls for writing poetry sympathising with certain Death Eaters. Though Hermione had no wish for Death Eaters to be glorified, she strongly objected their punishments, which were paraded around like decapitated heads on spikes. It was the degradation of Azkaban prisoners which led to her resignation from the Department of Magical Law enforcement, that and total disregard for human rights as the community was under constant surveillance. Anything to hide the scandals of the Ministry.

However, not everyone could see it like that. Everyone was still revelling in the celebrations of 'freedom' gained from five years ago. Harry and Ron wefre at the forefront, the Ministry's puppets, giving the good show, keeping up the morale and most importantly, diverting attention from what was really happening behind the curtains.

When Hermione filed for divorce, she was tempted to state the reason for doing so as 'Political differences.' It was true that she and Ron had drifted apart as their political views began to differ, Harry and Ron became more conservative whilst Hermione flooded with moral empathy, both finding no solutions to the problems that were present within the society they lived in.

Though Hermione and Ron had separated, they were still civil with each other. The decision to separate and divorce lifted part of the strain on their relationship. Hermione was also pleased that none of the Weasley family or friends had taken great offence, especially Molly had told her she was still welcome to pop round whenever she liked. Maybe that was Molly's nature, to pull everyone close together with her matriarchal strength. After losing so many people to the war, Molly was now the closest she had to a living mother since her parents' death. Sometimes Hermione felt guilty, wishing she'd taken up her parents' holiday offers instead of rejecting them in favour of the Burrow.

"Hello?" She asked after opening the door reluctantly, waiting for the ministry official to turn around. Hermione had very little to hide; she never really overtly voiced her disgust with the Ministry, too desperate for a life without complications. Too much of a coward as well. She was happier after leaving, finding the funds to open a dual magical and muggle bookstore.

Maybe this was yet another Ministry official that had come to see her about the extensive wards in the bookstore, whether they were compliant with the strict regulations.

"Ah, Hermione."

"Neville? What're you doing here?" She asked, noting that if it was personal business, he would be out of his uniform, "Is this about the wards in _The Kenaz_, because they've passed all of the new regulations now, and I don't need to tell you it's unprofessional to bring this business to my house without an owl first."

"What? No. It's to do with Andromeda, actually. She requires a favour and being bedridden, thought it was more effective sending me rather than an owl." Hermione let him enter the house, intrigued to know what this favour would entail.

**000000000000**

"I don't understand why you want me to look for him. Why not ask Blaise, as far as I'm aware they still owl one another." Hermione said, quite uncomfortable in her seat by the woman's hospital bed.

Andromeda had been ill for some months, staying in St Mungo's Hospital, a change in residence which seemed permanent. She was dying, this much was clear by the arrangements she had made with Molly to take over Ted's care after the inevitable departure. After losing both husband and daughter to the war, her health was never quite the same. Andromeda was strange, reclusive, and her interactions with Hermione always left the younger witch feeling confused. Sometimes Andromeda was overtly sympathetic to Hermione, and other times she was resentful. Though Hermione never quite understood why.

"Blaise has not seen Draco in person though, has he?" The older witch counter-argued. "Draco refuses to see anyone as I hear. Wasn't Blaise lost for a month the last time he tried to find him?"

That was true. Though Draco was obliged to register any location he resided in to the Ministry, he was never found in those locations. Hermione had overheard Blaise's wonder at why the Ministry were so lenient in letting Draco go with just a slap on the wrist.

"But why would he see me, of all people!" Hermione picked the skin off her finger harshly to draw blood. _Stressful_. "It's upsetting to hear Malfoy's mother is dying too, but surely if Blaise owled Malfoy to tell him of the circumstances, Malfoy would come. He holds his mother in high esteem."

"_Everyone_ knows he holds his mother in high esteem, do you not think any Death Eater kin have ever been oblivious to this fact? He won't believe an owl, he'll believe it in person."

"An aurora? The Daily Prophet, even."

"Hermione." Andromeda flatly stated, shaking her head.

"This is a ridiculous request, Andromeda." Hermione said as she stood up to leave.

"You're dabbling in Pensieves at the moment?" Andromeda asked suddenly.

Hermione turned to face her, "That's right." A terse reply. But Hermione liked her privacy and this was a personal project.

"I've been creating my own, for when Teddy is older. So he is able to conjure up the memories of his family when he is older, alongside Molly's anecdotes, the portraits and photographs… Would you like to look at one?"

"Where is this going?" Hermione asked. Andromeda's natural beauty was still evident through the ages, one of the Black family's many little legacies. Her whittled hair seemed to spring her from the hospital pillow, as if her face had woken from a sea of brown waves. It were her eyes that unsettled Hermione the most, there was something flowering darkly in her eyes as she handed Hermione a vial of pensieve. _One memory_.

Hermione conjured a shallow stone basin and tipped the silvery contents inside.

"When was this?" She asked Andromeda before touching the foggy liquid.

"You'll know when you see." The witch replied.

_The pensieve pulled her to 12 Grimmauld Place, that much Hermione was certain of. She had spent so long in the house, she recognised it instantly. When? Hermione turned to see herself walking out of the door hurriedly. She couldn't tell when though from what she was wearing as she never really had a huge wardrobe, finding books a better investment than clothes. Andromeda walked through her suddenly, momentarily jolting Hermione_

_She followed the older witch into the drawing room, watching her._

"_Merlin above, I hope they're okay." She muttered, worried about her daughter. Hermione felt sick as she suddenly remembered exactly when this took place. Her heartbeat rose as Andromeda nervously bit her lip following the family lines on the wall with her finger. Andromeda pushed away cardboard boxes Hermione had purposely left in front of the tapestry beforehand. She pushed the boxes following her parent's generation to hers and to that of her daughter's, finding it strange that her daughter wasn't no longer the youngest._

_A faint line was drawn from Draco's name to a new entry, "Hermione Granger" and from there on, there was a fainter line drawn downwards to another new entry, "Unknown". _

_"No!" Hermione shouted, a reflex before being pulled out of the memory. _

"Now you understand why I've asked _you_." Andromeda said plainly, motioning Hermione to resume her seat.

"Yes," Hermione replied, dazed and white-faced, unable to look back into those old dark flowering eyes.


	3. Porter ad Dimidus Ceterus

**A/N: **Oh my days it took LOOONNGG to construct the latin sentence used in this chapter. I may have used the wrong noun endings, but I don't think anyone will notice (if someone does, help me brush up on my latin). Again, any grammatical mistakes, let me know. I know I have a habit of overusing the comma, I think it's because I like poetry too much and transfer that type of syntax to prose.

I can feel a rhythm pick up as I write this now, it feels so good to submit a chapter and then begin writing the next one straight after. Means the story's going somewhere for me at least (hope you feel it's going somewhere too). It'd mean a lot if you reviewed. I don't want them for my ego or anything, I just do find reviews helpful so if the plot seems to be going haywire, I can tone it down (to a digree).

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**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Three: Porter ad Dimidus Cetefrus**

Hermione pushed down the tap to release cold water. It had to be a dream. A nightmare, even. Was she so engrossed with her work on using Pensieve to record dreams that she had confused dream with reality? The thought flared and extinguished quickly. No. Andromeda knew, she didn't know all the details, but she knew enough. Hermione let out a shuddered sigh feeling the tap water run down her face, running her fingers through her hair.

She faced herself in the mirror, finding no support there. She was still unrecognisable to herself, _like_ _two suns spinning at two different speeds_. And she still felt placid and fragile. Hermione reached out to touch her reflection, but still could not bring herself to make contact with the glass. She could not face herself when threatened by the past, afraid to have two worlds collide within her heart again. Nevertheless, she would have to go back to that damn room and face Andromeda.

**000000000000**

"You wish to buying this, sir?" The shop assistant asked. Draco promptly understood this was the best English he was to hear all day in the Basmanny District of Moscow. He looked at the young girl with her blue eyes and plain face; nevertheless he still found beauty in her. He gathered she must be far more educated than the girls from her village, guessing she was not from inner-city Moscow itself from her understated appearance. But she must be educated enough to help in selling art to tourists who ventured upon the street.

"Sir, you understand? You English, yes?" The girl asked, not used to such an invasive gaze, hoping she was right in thinking the book he was holding was an English-to-Russian phrasebook, and not German-to-Russian.

"Sorry, I understand. Just looking." He said, pointing at his eyes. The girl smiled, nodding.

He looked back at the reprinted version of Mikhail Vrubel's _Demon seated in the garden_ painting. Lately he'd been enamoured by such expressive paintings; the frenzied painting style especially. If he wasn't so much of a perfectionist, he'd take up painting, but if Draco didn't get it right the first time, he tended not to bother. He'd say it wasn't worth his time, but in truth, he was just lazy and proud.

"How long stay you here?" The girl asked, leaning in closer to him. Draco subconsciously took half a step back, surprised and unused to spontaneous invasions in proximity.

"Until I decide to leave," He shrugged. Though having his wand did give him that boost of confidence, he still was cool, calm and calculated in most situations. He perfected the art of looking uninterested, but the façade sometimes cracked and people would walk by him as he sat drinking coffee outside the local café, wondering what he was thinking with those intense eyes gazing in the distance.

Another shop assistant walked by and giggled, pushing a brochure into the girl's hands, motioning her to give the brochure to Draco. The girl took it and blushed, muttering something under her breath, probably a curse out of embarrassment. Draco did not have the patience for such giddiness, and felt old for recognising that.

"Here." The girl stated, giving Draco the brochure.

"Why?" Draco asked, taking the brochure from her.

"You here for week now in shop. Like statue. Traveller yes?" She asked Draco.

"Yes." Draco responded, wondering where this was leading.

"Then buy something here or see real paintings." She giggled, pointing to the brochure in her hands. It advertised the Tretyakov Gallery.

Draco rubbed the inner corner of his eye with his free hand, "Thanks." He looked back to the girl, with her hopeful smile and nimble fingers that played with each other. He knew there was going to be another question.

"Go tomorrow? And me?" The girl asked. Draco smirked. The girl was bold, he'd give her that. But she was bland, she looked bland. Maybe that was the wrong judgement to make, but what with the language barrier, it wasn't worth the hassle. The girl was obviously looking for her own Eugene Onegin, but what was he – just a simple parody. A caricature of the Byronic hero. Maybe the girl had characterised Draco for what he truly was; a parody of the Byronic hero.

"Maybe." He didn't want one more girl to fawn over him anymore; he wanted a woman to fight him. And he could never settle long enough in an area to be confronted by that woman.

**000000000000**

"Does anyone else know?" Hermione asked as coolly as possible.

"No." Andromeda simply answered.

Hermione nodded, too disgusted to look at the woman. Speaking to her was enough to pummel bile through the whole of her body. This woman had come into her heart and wrenched out her most painful experience, dangling the limb in front of Hermione as a hunter baits the fish.

"Please, don't hate me."

"You're blackmailing me; I have every reason to severely dislike you." Hermione curtly responded, turning to face her.

"You don't under-"

"No! _You_ don't understand!" The threat of tears forming in her eyes. Hermione thought five years would be enough to bury them completely, but Andromeda had brought out them out of their grave, kicking and screaming. "You know _nothing_ of what happened! The misery involved! And you're using it all against me."

"Do you honestly think I don't know anything of misery?" The old woman croaked in defence, "I was disowned for the man I loved, lived through both his and my daughter's death."

Hermione was unable to argue with that, so she stayed silent, folding her arms defensively. Hermione had perfected the art of silence so well; it stood like the Berlin wall between the two women. Andromeda slowly shifted to sit upright, holding onto the bars beside the bed for assistance. Hermione looked away and noticed the wand in her hand. She had obliviated Remus' memory beforehand, why not obliviate the woman and get out as fast as possible?

"If you knew, why did you not tell me there and then?" Hermione asked, covertly manoeuvring her wand so it faced the older witch. "Or is it a trait of all the Black family to keep information a secret until it can be used as a weapon?"

"Hermione, you were so upset. I didn't want your grief on top of mine. It's selfish, but it's the truth… What did –"

"Do not ask me what happened, you don't deserve to know." Hermione seethed, pulling her wand out defensively before Andromeda could finish. She walked across the room and extended her wand so the tip touched Andromeda's temple. Andromeda did not even flinch.

"I wouldn't, Hermione. The healers here are far from stupid." She reminded the younger witch.

Hermione lowered the wand knowing Andromeda was right. _Fuck_.

"Why did you get rid of the baby?"

When Hermione closed her eyes, they became great urns that trickled water down her pale face. She dabbed her eyes, "I got rid because…" She sighed, trying to smile but grimacing instead, "because it was the right thing to do."

Another silence followed.

This silence carried so many memories, thoughts, dreams, and hopes; a whole menagerie of delicate details. Hermione had carried this silence carefully through the years, placing it beside her bed every night before sleeping.

Every so often, the silence would break when the lid of the box beneath Hermione's bed would fall to the floor. Some scurrying through the contents and finally a picture taken out. _How does a simple, grainy black and white photograph sing the saddest song you know?_ Hermione asked herself. And then when the photograph had wounded Hermione sufficiently with its song, she would return it back to the box, bury it underneath other items, right at the bottom, regretting ever opening the box. She would place the lid back on and slide it underneath her bed, letting the silence fall back into place. Back to beside her bed, just before sleep.

"Does he know?" asked Andromeda, breaking the silence.

"I don't know," Hermione shrugged. "What's more important is none of the Death Eaters knew." And then the thought came to her, like a bird hurried in flight. What if Draco did know? She knew already that Draco had informed them of her parents' whereabouts, having only told him, Ron and Harry of her plans to obliviate their memory and send them to Australia. That betrayal hurt as it was unnecessary and spiteful.

What if that unnecessary betrayal had motive? But he hardly needed to score points with Voldemort, he had killed before. Some muggle on the outskirts of Oxford, Draco confessed during his trial. Besides, deep down, did she really want to think he was that malicious? _He's a Malfoy_, the doubt argued in her head. Maybe he did know after all and wanted to kill two birds with one stone: kill any evidence of their interactions and save his own skin.

After all, it could be argued that is what she did in return.

_Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me._

"You have to put all this aside and find him." Andromeda said, before adding, "For the sake of his mother at least."

There were so many holes to Andromeda's logic, Hermione wasted no time in asserting them, "Why can't his mother find him then? Or even Lucius? It makes more sense to use the bond between parent and son in order to find Malfoy."

Andromeda quickly dismissed the notion, waving her hand, "Lucius has no love for the boy; there is no real bond as far as father-and-son are concerned. And as for my sister, well, she stood by that man. Betrayed her child doing so as far as I'm concerned."

Hermione rolled her eyes. Though she agreed with Andromeda when she chastised her sister for staying with that wretched man, Hermione knew Narcissa loved her son. No one lied to Voldemort without good reason. Narcissa's was her son's safety. It all didn't add up in that respect.

"This is about more than just his mother, isn't it?"

Andromeda did not answer her question and looked away.

Hermione shook her head; she would soon find out, "What I don't understand is why you've picked me. We haven't spoken in nearly six years."

"You're the only one who can find him quickly enough, given the circumstances."

"And how do you come to that conclusion?"

You are friends with the Boy-Who-Lived, Hermione; do you understand why he beat death the first time?"

"Amortentia," Hermione simply answered, still not understanding completely, "Sacrificial protection. What has that got to do –"

"You carried his flesh and blood along with yours. You sacrificed your child for his safety. Do you honestly believe a termination is the be all and end all as far as magic is concerned?"

Hermione sighed, "I was hoping so."

**000000000000**

Draco looked over his shoulder as he waited by the entrance to the Tretyakov Gallery. All he saw was an assortment of pedestrians; men wearing flat caps cleaning the streets, tourists walking by bumping into each other, foreign students pointing at one building and then another, gasping in amazement. But there was something right in the corner of his eye, he couldn't pinpoint it exactly.

He knew he was being followed. For how long, Draco wasn't quite sure.

_Fuck_, he cursed under his breath, the cold in his breath lifting into the surrounding air. He looked over his shoulder again, this time briefly spotting a wand pointed in his direction. He had no choice but to run. _Let the Ministry come to clean up the mess_, he thought as he pushed pedestrians out of the way, unable to find a discrete place to apparate from.

"Draco!" He heard someone taunt. He could tell they weren't far away. Draco stopped long enough to see Goyle's face and wand with the beginnings of an unforgivable spewing from his mouth. Afraid, Draco closed his eyes tightly and apparated without any deliberation on location, but with the upmost haste.

_Breathe._ _Breathe_. _You're okay_. He told himself, unable to hear Russian life around him anymore. _You just made it_.

Though Draco still gave it a few moments before he opened his eyes again.

He took a couple of deep breaths, quickly patting himself to make sure he hadn't splinched his body in apparating so suddenly. The sights and sounds, even the smell of the now changed environment, it unnerved him. He rose to full height and shook dirt away from his clothes, watching the busy street around him bustle away. There were brightly coloured clothes, people of every colour who ignored his presence and went on with their lives around him. It was as though he'd stepped in on a street party. That's what Draco gathered anyway.

As Draco walked on through the street trying to understand the language of the people around him, he quickly realised he had no idea where he was.

_No matter_, he thought, still feeling shaky, _isn't this always how the fox lives?_

**000000000000**

If Hermione was a braver person, she would have refused and called Andromeda's bluff, but she wasn't. During the war, Hermione learned it was better to be cautious than to be too brave. She felt sympathetic towards Harry, realising what a burden it was to be a chosen one. Hermione also felt the albatross around her neck gain a little more weight.

"So what am I supposed to do when I find him? Sit down and have a cup of tea?" Hermione relented. There was no turning back once she said this. Nevertheless, there was no other way to escape from the absurd and cruel task given, _as of yet anyway_, Hermione noted.

"Give him this," Andromeda said, pulling a letter from underneath her pillow. Hermione observed the letter was sealed with magical wax, only intended to be opened one recipient alone. "Tell him his mother needs him."

Hermione took the letter from the woman, looking over the waxy runes that had sealed the envelope. These runes were different to those found in _The Tales of the Beedle and the Bard_. She found them interesting and ran her fingers across them, hoping she had time to translate them. She had found runes to be more mystical than the Latin based wand spells commonly used. Languages of the earth such as runes brought nature and body together, there was much ancient poetry found within them that many wizards were unaware of.

"So this won't take long," Hermione absently questioned still fingering the runes, turning the envelope over to see if there were anymore inscriptions. _None_.

"No. But you must go now."

Hermione looked at Andromeda, "Now?"

"Yes."

Her eyebrow rose, "What, right this second?"

"Yes."

"I have a bookstore to run, Andromeda. I can't give up my responsibilities to go on a silly quest."

"You have a bookstore that is not open yet, it is still to pass various inspections. One day, Hermione. It will only take one day."

"One day is a lifetime too many," She muttered in defiance. Andromeda threw her a disapproving look. "Okay! Fine! I'll be your courier, but one day is all I'll sacrifice to that man. I'll give him the letter, pass on your message, but after that it is out of my hands. I cannot do anything more."

"So we have an understanding then?"

"Let me destroy that pensieve. Then we'll have an understanding." She levelled.

Andromeda nodded. Hermione pulled out her wand and pointed it at the pensieve "_Confringo._" The pensieve basin promptly burst into flames, the memory itself evaporating into the air until it became nothing.

"Are you ready?" Andromeda asked.

"Thousands of years away from it," Hermione replied, shaking her head, her stomach unsettled. Andromeda had given her no time to prepare herself emotionally for the task at hand and Hermione was beginning to panic as a result. Her brow was dampening already.

"Have you something which serves as a physical reminder?"

"Evidence, you mean?" Hermione asked suspiciously.

"It helps with the charm. If not, it may take you more than one day."

"Fuck's sake." She muttered, taking a moment before closing her eyes. She took two deep breaths to steady herself and flicked her wand "_Accio Cariad_."

She was surprised she did not stutter. That was the first time she had ever allowed herself to say that word aloud in five years. When those six consonants and vowels forced their way into the air, her body shuddered. Her lips felt cold and scarred, as though she had uttered the killing curse, or was the recipient of the curse. Saying that one name had violently tugged the past into the room too.

Hermione opened her eyes and took hold of the floating scan before Andromeda could further invade her privacy. _Merlin above, I can feel the death that has invaded this room._

"Now what?" She breathed, unable to look at Andromeda for how ashamed she suddenly felt being exposed with her secrets naked in front of this dying woman.

"You have to really concentrate when you say this," Andromeda said before passing her a small piece of parchment that had been torn from a book. "This is old magic, it's not like your standard spell which relies on precision, this relies on the heart."

"Where did you get this from?" Hermione asked curiously as she took the parchment.

"Every family has heirlooms that are passed down from generation to generation." She shrugged.

"Dark magic?"

"If you think Amortentia can be dark?"

Hermione scanned over the incantation written on the parchment. _Latin. Dull_, she immediately thought, she was hoping to see more runes; _this isn't not ancient magic then, just old_. She sighed, wondering how long Andromeda had been planning this, questioning whether she could trust anything Andromeda had said. Someone had to have helped her retrieve this from the Black family vault. But there was no turning back.

"I just have to say it?"

"With the tip of your wand touching the picture." Andromeda explained, leaning forward. She was interested to see how the spell would unfold.

"Okay… here we go." Hermione said. _Allow yourself to remember, remember all the little details_ she told herself. She tried to also convince herself that she was about to enter a dream again, a little training exercise she'd do before recording her dreams using pensieve.

She started the Pensieve project in an attempt to understand and control her dreams. Since the war, her dreams turned night-thoughts into night-sweats. They were vivid, angry splashes of red and always had the same horrific ending. So being practical, Hermione endeavoured to at least control her actions in her dreams. So far it had been a trial-and-error process.

_Remember_.

Her dreams would always begin with a specific memory.

"_I'll be gone by the time you get back!" Hermione shouted to him._

_Draco shrugged as he opened the door, "No you won't. You're going to stay here all night."_

Hermione took another deep breath, trying to prepare herself to be plunged headfirst into that strange sea of confused desire.

"_Porter ad dimidus ceterus_,"

_Let me be carried to the remaining half_.

Her dreams complied and swiftly pulled her from the ground.

**000000000000**

Hermione fell back to the ground, but the smell of the earth beneath her hands was different, foreign.

"Ugh," Was her first voiced reaction. Her second reaction was to scramble around the floor so she could pocket the envelope and the scan that she had lost hold of. Safely stowing both articles away into her jean pocket, Hermione pulled herself up and scanned the ground. Her third reaction would have been to pick up her wand, but she could not find it. She brought her hands to her temple, still feeling dizzy from the travel made. _Definitely worse than using a portkey_.

"Hermione?" A voice located behind her asked hesitantly.

If Hermione was looking to steady herself, recognising that voice did her no favours. She looked around and saw Draco with her wand. He held it like a weapon. Hermione did not look at his face; she could not look at anything other than the wand in his hand, _her _wand about to be used against her.

"Give me my wand back." She said carefully, her eyes not meeting his.

Draco opened his mouth, but all Hermione could hear was an abrupt roar of fire.

Surprised by the surreal response, Hermione looked up wondering if she was trapped in one of her dreams again. But in her dreams she could never physically feel anything; here she distinctly felt the flames lick her shoulder.

"Get down!" Draco shouted, pushing Hermione to the floor before another bolt of fire engulfed them both completely.


	4. Blood

This was originally meant to be one chapter, but I've ended up splitting it into two chapters as it was getting too long in my opinion. I think this chapter is a bit of a filler chapter, and I'm unsure of it, so feedback would be great. I wish to personally thank each reviewer who has taken the time to write such lovely comments about this story so far, it really does mean the world to me, so you'll be getting a little message over the course of this week.

Anyway, more a roving despite Byron's pleas:

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* * *

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**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Four: Blood**

Hermione felt strong heat and smoke scratch the lower part of her back as another wave of fire spilt violently across the room. She spluttered, closing her sore eyes; the smoke which scratched at her was now thick around her throat and lungs. It also blindfolded her, held her captive against her will. The fire consumed everything; its smoke quickly took away the colour of her hair.

Draco knew they could not escape tfhe building by simply walking out. He knew Goyle's method of siege and capture too well having witnessed it early on during the war. It would also be no use trying to disapparate as Goyle would have cast an anti-disapparition spell on the building. Whilst thinking of another way to escape the fire, Draco caught sight of the shabby fireplace by the window. It was safe, made of stone, but still behind billows of smoke. He tried to make out whether his pocket-watch had survived. Though he was sure it was he who saw the fireplace first, it was Hermione who took lead and scrambled towards it, pulling Draco along.

They both stepped into the fireplace, finding some relief in the little alcove it provided. _Shit_, Hermione thought when it finally dawned upon her. _No Floo_. Aware of this, Draco lifted his arm and swept the mantelpiece shelf until his hands reached the pocket watch. Clutching the item, Draco brought it into the alcove and set Hermione's wand upon it.

"_Portus_." The pocket watch assumed a blue colour. Hermione found the blue colour alluring, especially in contrast to the grey and orange fire that continued to rip through the room.

_Somewhere safe_, Draco thought when the pocket watch stopped glowing. Hermione took hold of the chain and both felt the unpleasant jerking sensation gather around their navels.

"Ugh!" Hermione coughed as her body hit stone floor. They both coughed and spluttered for some minutes. She hoisted herself up to a comfortable sitting position and then pulled her hair back behind her ears. Smoke had knotted itself within her hair, but it was of no danger anymore. She rubbed her eyes with her fingers, feeling her pupils bulge against her eyelids.

"How did you find me?" Draco asked. He had landed on his feet and was stood quite a distance from Hermione. He asked as if the fire never happened, asking again the question the fire silenced the first time around. His tone was indecipherable, somewhere between shocked and suspicious, but still calm. Like a small pebble a child had delicately dropped into a lake.

Hermione rubbed her nose before looking at him, glad he kept his distance. First she tried to recognise her surroundings, what seemed to be some cottage. She wasn't sure which country they were even in. Hermione observed his hand was still clutching her wand, something which made her wary. And still, she could not bring herself to look at his face despite wondering how it may have changed in the last five years since his trial.

In contrast, Draco took in every detail, because he didn't know what to expect from her in reply. He had asked her how and then he would ask why. Her answer would define the parameters of this encounter and Draco did not want to take one single detail for granted. So he quickly observed and mentally noted an inventory of changes that had occurred in the last five years.

He saw her face had become angular, her jaw line more pronounced, and her neck had also lengthened elegantly. He frowned as he also saw there was no ring on her right finger as she rubbed her eyes, _so the divorce is well underway_. There were slight bags underneath Hermione's eyes, but Draco would have always expected that as he knew she was the kind of girl to work feverishly until she came to an answer, a conclusion, a balance in an equation she was trying to solve. She would always have those small tiny bags underneath her eyes as she would never quite understand life, it was a problem that always evolved, and whenever an answer presented itself, the problem had changed so the outcome no longer worked. Draco had the same misfortune, as he subconsciously rubbed the dark circle under his left eye.

"…It's complicated," She finally answered, looking at the floor, "Andromeda sent me… Can you give me my wand back now?"

"No."

"No?" His refusal made her angry enough to look him straight in the eye. She saw he had also changed, but not so much, there was still that same essence present. Looking at him snapped some of the fastenings she had spent years trying to construct in order to separate the past from her present. Now her past and present stood before herself, two suns spinning out of rhythm, magnets unable to connect because of the conflict in magnetic field.

"Not until you explain how and why you are here." Draco said, adding her annoyed facial expression to the inventory. It had been far too long since he had seen that face.

"You've sodding cheek!", and with that Hermione stood up, walked across the room whilst pulling Andromeda's message from her jeans pocket and handed it to him. As he took the envelope from her hand with a confused expression on his face, she promptly took the opportunity to punch him as hard as she could.

Draco staggered back, still managing to keep a tight grip of her wand, "What the fuck, Hermione!" He shouted as he brought his hand to the bottom of his nose, feeling a small amount of blood pat down the soft hairs on the back of his fingers. He looked at her with his eyes widened, completely and utterly surprised.

"My parents!" She screamed. Draco's whole body had instantly tensed itself in reaction to her outburst of violence, but as soon as he heard her reason, his body relaxed. He nodded as if to say _yes, you're right, you were right to do that_.

He often thought how he would explain himself given the very small possibility he would ever see Hermione again. Despite telling himself he had no feelings for her, he thought about her enough to realise he did feel a lot, and it was mostly guilt and regret. He had imagined hours and hours' worth of sober discussions to take place, but never a punch in the face. And never silence from himself, but all he could do was stay silent. He looked at her, wishing to say something, trying to pick from an assortment of lines he had rehearsed in his head, but could not say them.

Hermione shook her head and walked out of the cottage.

She needed night air. As she stood outside the door, she looked up to the starry sky. When she was a little girl, she used to reach out her hand and try pick the stars from the sky. Sometimes she wished she could take a stick and weave the stars round and round this stick so it was like some big mesh of stars and threads of rock. And Hermione would daydream of carrying this celestial candyfloss stick into the dark, somewhere in a very dark place where she could bring some form of illumination, a spark of heaven where it was needed most.

Hermione really needed that torch of heaven to light the dark crevasses of her being. Sometimes she would spend days lost in one small cave in her soul, angry and hurt. Unable to see a way out, and when she had found a way out of one hole, she was so dazed and confused; she'd accidentally stumble into another. _Life_.

She heard the door open as Draco stepped out. Hermione knew the fire was meant to choke him out, and he was still set on by the hounds of remaining Death Eater supporters. Watching him escape from the fire made her question how he managed to survive so long by desperately running like the hunted.

"I am so sorry." He simply said, not looking at her.

_I wish 'I'm sorry' was enough, but we all know it's not._

But she just nodded, and both gazed at the Auriga constellation in silence.

"Look, I have to go," She said after a few moments, "I was just sent to give you that envelope."

"Okay." He simply said, watching the star Capella twinkle.

He watched her as she disapparated from the cottage garden. Draco wondered whether she left her wand with him on purpose and whether it even mattered. The whispering envelope sat flat and still unopened inside his clasped hand.

**000000000000**

"Fucking boggart!" Zacharias Smith exclaimed, slamming his wand on the counter.

"Excuse his language," Hermione apologised to the customer whilst glaring at Zach. The customer smiled politely and muttered it was okay, but Hermione still held her disgruntled gaze, "Where is it?" She asked packing the purchased books in a small bag.

"In the back of the storeroom, nearly gave me a damn heart attack, Hermione!" Zach sighed loudly, patting his chest for added effect.

Hermione watched as the customer left, putting the pound coins in the till, "You hold the fort here then, and mind your bloody language! This _is_ the muggle section Zach! If I knew you were going to mouth off about one magical calamity after another I would have employed Luna to manage this section."

"Sorry, Hermione." He said, eyes looking down upon the counter. Hermione picked up his wand and waved it in his face. "Sorry" he mouthed hearing the bell ring as another muggle customer entered the _Kenaz_ bookshop.

"If you have any problems here, just give Luna a shout. She's upstairs dealing with some old witches and their subscription forms for some magazines." Hermione advised, taking Zach's wand with her to the storeroom downstairs. She had recently employed both Zach and Luna to manage the two opposing sections of the bookshop, having first-hand experience of their abilities to take orders well in the DA meetings.

_Or so I thought anyway_, Hermione thought as she stepped carefully down the stairs, her shoulder still throbbing from the two falls experienced three nights ago. She rubbed her shoulder feeling severely annoyed. Neville promised her outright that his division within the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had found no magical creatures on the premise.

"Yet here we are, Neville," Hermione said aloud. She felt sorry for him though, he did not really want to work for the Ministry, but his application for position of Herbology professor at Hogwarts had been tentatively declined by McGonagall, who claimed Neville needed more field-based experience before applying again. _What a fucking joke, as if a war wasn't enough field-based experience_, Hermione thought to herself.

"_Lumos_" she commanded Zach's wand, watching the tip glow whilst she opened the storeroom door. The room was pitch-black. Nothing short of a surprise for Hermione, boggarts were hardly imaginative when it came to setting the scene for your biggest fear. Nevertheless, though it was quite unimaginative, the boggarts knew that the darkness alone was the most fertile a setting could be for the tiniest seeds of fear to grow healthy and strong.

"Alright, you wretched creature," Hermione called, "come out and let's get this over with." She held Zacharias' wand firmly within her hand, waiting for her fear to appear before her. Hermione knew for certain her biggest fear was no longer failing an exam, a realisation which made her feel nostalgic for those trivial days, and she was curious to see how her fear had evolved along with her experiences. As a figure emerged from the darkest corner of the room, Hermione he wondered if her fear would be Andromeda revealing her secret and the loss of reputation it would entail; or perhaps Bellatrix back from the dead, or even…

"Malfoy?" She asked, confused by the appearance. The figure said nothing in return, but took small steps towards her. There was no smirk upon his face, but some dried blood on his neck from where a wound had recently been healed. Hermione would have drawn back equal small steps if afraid, but she wasn't. She wasn't afraid.

"Hello Malfoy," This time with confidence.

The figure stopped advancing, "I liked it better when you called me Draco." He said, using Hermione's wand to lock the door behind her and turning on the storeroom lights. He wanted to say sorry for leaving her without her wand for three long days; having possession of a wand again made him reluctant to return the item back to its rightful owner. It certainly was useful casting spells to protect himself of Goyle. He wanted to explain this, but again kept silent.

"That was back then," She said quietly, gently biting the tip of her thumb. Draco noted she still bit the skin around her nails, probably one of those lifetime habits. He leaned against one of the storage units, pulling out a cigarette packet from his jeans. He had been accustomed to wearing muggle clothing since leaving the magical community, finding the muggle world more practical. It was almost enjoyable sometimes, especially when he found himself trawling through great libraries and museums, it was like discovering a new world. He felt ashamed of his younger self and how he had insulted that which he had no experience of ever seeing.

"Don't you dare! There are books of great worth and antiquity within this room. They could last a few more decades unless you sully them with smoke now." Hermione warned, flicking Zach's wand causing the cigarette box to fall to the floor.

Having accumulated great respect for muggle literature in the last few years, Draco said nothing in retaliation. Though he had respect for muggle literature and found the history of muggles as interesting as that of the Wizarding world, he still had some contempt for muggles themselves. It was because some of them reminded him of the Death Eaters, factions within each community that took it upon themselves to destroy the opposing faction. Once, he saw a man burn a religious book; the image of the hate in the man's eyes would stay with Draco forever, shameful he ever had that same uneducated hate in his eyes. _Perspective is a great teacher_, he concluded.

"So how did you find me?" He asked, looking along the shelves to see what muggle literature was sold here, wondering what editions of _Hamlet_ she stocked in particular.

"Shouldn't you be more concerned with the contents of the letter I gave you? Your mother _is_ dying. Why are you even here?" Hermione counter-argued. Having not seen Draco for five years and then seeing the man twice in three days was too intense. Her dreams had shifted in reaction to his reappearance, symbols and events occurred in her dreams that troubled her because they were different to those that she had dreamt four nights beforehand.

"I need help deciphering the letter; I didn't take Ancient Runes. Though now I understand why my mother was so disappointed with that particular decision." Half-true, _but not a complete lie_ Draco silently argued.

"Hindsight's always twenty-twenty." Hermione shrugged.

"Indeed."

"So Hermione… _how_ did you find me?"

"Andromeda sent me."

"Why you?"

"Because I'm reliable, I guess."

Draco smiled to himself, not believing her for one second. He believed Andromeda did send her, as the letter was so seeped in Black history, no one but a member of the Black family would be able to retain the letter for long without the Black heirloom cursing them. He did not believe Andromeda sent Hermione for the reason she stated though, and could not obtain a truthful answer from Andromeda as she was under constant surveillance from the healers assigned to her. Not that he wanted to particularly see Andromeda either.

Nevertheless, if this was the answer Hermione wished to give, he would humour her.

"How then?" Draco challenged.

"She used her blood. Your family blood. The method is guaranteed to locate any family member if enough is used… Third-year magic, honestly." She muttered, hoping the quip at the end would trigger the man's pride so he would leave

Draco feigned a frown; he had been expecting that particular answer, "What I don't understand is how it takes Goyle a good month to track my whereabouts using my own father's blood…. But my aunt's blood brought you to me instantly… Strange, don't you think?"

"I think you should leave now. This is my bookshop, Malfoy, and you really must go before you're accused of breaking and entering," She said, before almost pleading, "I have a life to get back to. No good will come of this."

"Why can't you answer that one fucking question?" Draco angrily asked, his patience fast wearing thin. Did she not understand? If she was able to find him that accurately using his aunt's blood and whatever else she used, it wouldn't be long before Goyle would naturally discover a more efficient method using the same lines. He was done feigning Blaise's stoic approach, he had to know. Why was she so unwilling to answer that one damn question?

"Because I owe you nothing, Malfoy! You betrayed me and bloody well destroyed any chance I had of leading a peaceful life."

"I betrayed you?" He asked, frowning – this time it was a real frown, "You know full well I had no hand in what happened to your pare–"

"But you must have told Voldemort where I hid them. Only you, Ron and Harry knew of my plans."

"Hermione, I never told anyone about your parents. Voldemort was an accomplished legilimens, directly linked to Potter, it was inevitable tha–" She knew that was the case, but she wanted to lash out and push out some of her grief from the pit of her stomach.

"Why didn't you warn me then? Why did you not stop them?" Hermione desperately asked.

"There was no other way… Please, let me explain."

Hermione breathed deeply, gathering herself, "No, I heard enough of your version of the events at your trial."

"Hermione, that was quite a censored version. If I told them anything more, it would have compromised your reputation, and we can't have the virginal Gryffindor Hermione Granger sullied with such vile associations." Draco bitterly said, angry with the amount of verbal blockades she kept building in their exchange.

"Shut up."

"Hit a nerve, have I, dearest? Why are you so angry with me, I wonder? I heard you and Weaselbee recently divorced, is he not as satisfying as I was?" It was uncalled for, true, but Draco's patience was lost.

She pushed him, causing him to stumble backwards, "Don't. It was one night, unworthy of mentioning."

"It wasn't entirely like that and you know it." Both had borrowed wands inches away from each other's faces.

"Just go, Malfoy."

"You know Granger; I don't even know why I waste my time. Why I ever wasted my time speaking to someone as cowardly as you." It was a vicious statement and he used the wrong word. What he found frustrating was her reluctance, her hatred, her refusal. He hated it all because it reminded him of his own cowardice.

"Fuck you Malfoy; I fought more than Death Eaters over the last five years. What have you done apart from run away?" There, she had called him out on it.

"Do you see me running now?" He retorted, Hermione's wand in his hand gently jabbed her forehead. She pushed it out of the way angrily, but said nothing in return. She didn't know whether she was moments away from hurling a hex or having a breakdown.

"Just answer my question, that's all I want." He said, restraining himself from slamming her against one of the surrounding shelves, holding her hostage until she gave a truthful answer. He was still somewhat skilled in legilimency, her mind was still open like a foreign book to him after all these years, accessible enough to discern when she was telling the truth. And she had not been. All he wanted was to know so he could better defend himself.

"You didn't use my aunt's blood, did you?" His wand aiming for her forehead once more, but no words came from her mouth, "Whose fucking blood did you use, Granger?" He shouted in her face.

She flinched, but her hand kept steady with the wand firmly gripped. _Enough_, she thought, _stop protecting him, if he wants to know the ugly truth, let him know of it_.

"Ours." The word came out strong but jagged passing the fast-growing lump in her throat.

"What?" He asked disbelievingly, extracting enough from her mind to know she had told the truth, but unable to understand it.

The next set of words stumbled out, barely escaping the now hard, gnarly rock in her throat, "I used _our_ blood."

She pulled her wand so it met her forehead again, allowing Draco to invade her mind to see one brief moment, "I did warn you no good would come of this. Don't say I didn't warn you."

_Draco took Hermione's place in her memory, watching himself prick his finger and watched as two blood drops fell into a potion._

_For two minutes nothing happened, and then the potion slowly turned ruby red in colour._

_Draco felt himself close her eyes and laugh. Then his hands shook as he quickly scribbled down dates and did the math on a scrap piece of parchment. _

_15__th__ of October – 20__th__ of October._

_1__st__/2__nd__ of November – Draco_

_Today's date: 13__th__ December_

_Weeks: 7_

"_Oh, shit."_

"Oh, shit." He repeated as Hermione pushed him out of the memory, removing her wand from her forehead.

Draco looked at her and tried to swallow the urge to run away again, but he couldn't. Hermione watched as he dropped her wand, shaking his head. He took small steps back, retreating into the corner from which he came and disapparated.

"I see you running now." She said, kneeling to pick up her wand from the floor, emotionally exhausted.


	5. Strangeways Revisited

I've posted this quite early as it was intended to be the second part of the previous chapter after all. Hope I've managed to convey characters/emotions well enough, as I know it's a delicate situation and it really does change people. It was quite subduing writing this chapter, emotionally taxing in some places. Hopefully I've done it some justice in writing this chapter. Let me know.

May edit the ending of this chapter slightly (& also any grammar mistakes I may have made, this was one of those chapters that had to be written there and then; completely raw and birthed with its imperfections), but willf let readers know in the next A/N & chapter if I have made any changes, depending on reviews.

PS, I haven't forgotten my promise - I still will be messaging reviewers over the course of this week. Thank you.

* * *

**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Five: Strangeways Revisited**

"Is it true?" He looked to Blaise for confirmation.

Blaise nodded, "You know it's true."

"I – I don't understand." Draco breathed, ruffling his hair as he slid down the wall he was leaning against.

Blaise watched as Draco squatted on the floor, his back still leaning against the wall. He shook his head. Ten minutes beforehand Blaise was enjoying a glass of elderflower wine, moments away from playing a jazz record. Only Draco Malfoy would take that moment to apparate into the room, knock over the bottled wine on the table. Blaise sighed to himself, taking a sip of the elderflower wine; he knew Draco would have more questions and prepared himself for a stressful night ahead.

"There's not much to understand, Draco." Blaise shrugged, repairing the wine glass and pouring Draco a glass of wine. He found Draco's behaviour utterly selfish. Blaise had spent months trying to find Draco, kept in touch with the man, gave him insight into the Wizarding community, and for what? To be hexed into an unknown forest for a whole month. _And now Draco intrudes on a relaxing night in_. As soon as Draco apparated in the room, Blaise knew he had found out. He handed the blonde fool the glass of wine.

Draco exhaled as he took the offered glass from Blaise's hands.

"Why didn't you tell me anything of it?" He asked, a little calmer, before downing the glass' contents in one swig. Hardly classy, but Draco needed some kind of alcohol swimming through his system as quickly as possible. It was not in his nature to be this reactive; he had always prided himself in keeping up the façade of a man constantly bored by his surroundings, even in Blaise's company. Nevertheless, he had run into a head-on collision with the consequences of his actions and currently stood in the wreckage of it, excavating any fragments that could construct Hermione's life that he had been oblivious to thus far.

Blaise looked at him briefly before catching his eyes, and then looked away, sighing again, "It happened on the eve of the war. We all had to do our part in the war to survive… to help others survive also."

He looked away because he felt guilty. Some part of him inside knew he gave Hermione the final push in making the decision she did. However, Blaise was only acting in the best interests of Malfoy. At the time he believed whatever had gone on between Malfoy and Granger, it was just a mere fling, something both would grow out of. A certain mistake. And he wished it upon neither to be held accountable for that mistake, especially if the Dark Lord was to be victorious.

Nevertheless, as his friendship with Granger deepened, he realised the relationship with Malfoy was no mere fling. It was no mistake. His logical assumptions were incorrect, which greatly unsettled him as Blaise always saw himself as right and safe on his high horse.

"Why not tell me after the war, then? I deserve a right to know after all!" Draco exclaimed, jutting his chest with his thumb. Blaise did not answer finding Draco unable to deal with, or maybe that was a mistaken opinion as it was Blaise who was unable to deal with such raw, delicate situations. Blaise found it easy only to objectify such situations at a distance, like a man with a view from a bridge. Draco would have also preferred standing on the bridge, but was a child caught in the eye of the storm.

Draco sighed, rubbing his eyes, "Where is the child then? Hidden I expect…" His eyebrows knitted together before raising quickly, "Good Merlin, not with Weasley? Is that why she married him? I'll be damned if that pathetic excuse of a wizard has anything to do with the upbringing of a Malfoy."

Blaise shook his head in disbelief; Draco did not understand whatsoever. Whatever beginning and middle he had been told, Draco had obviously followed the commands of his feet first before hearing the end. _Fool_.

He gritted his teeth, "If you want to know, Malfoy, you'd better see it with your own eyes. _Accio pensieve_!" he commanded. A basin and a large trinket promptly entered the room upon Blaise's request. After a moment of deliberating, Blaise took a selection of vials containing pensieves from the large trinket and poured them into the hovering basin, a quick succession of one after another. The basin set itself down upon the floor and Blaise motioned Draco to come forward.

Draco got up off the floor and stepped to the basin, peering at the contents.

"After all these months of teasing Granger, it seems pensieves really are quite useful," Blaise muttered to himself as he grabbed the bottle of wine and set himself to leave the room. Draco looked to him questioningly. "You'll want to be alone after you see this," Blaise commented before leaving. _Or rather, I do not wish to be in your company when you realise_.

Draco frowned, looking once more into the contents of the basin, "Okay…" he said to himself before pushing his face past the surface of the silvery substance.

"_You could be a poet or you could be a fool, Granger." He heard Blaise say. Draco looked around him, recognising the setting as the woods in which he had his first real conversation with Granger, nearly seven years ago. Draco looked around him, taking in the woods around him once more. _

"_Is he… How is he doing?" She asked. Draco sat down beside her, trying to remember what he was doing this exact moment. He saw she was huddled in a coat and Blaise was fully cloaked with a scarf too. Wintertime, he deduced._

"_Well enough. I don't see him as often as he's too wrapped up in the family business." Ah, he was busy being bullied by Voldemort to punish Snatchers when ordered._

"_Has he ever…" _

"_No." Draco shifted himself on the rock, he could have contacted her if he had really wanted to. Too scared for his life, he guessed. Always a coward._

"_I suppose he wouldn't." She near whispered._

"_He doesn't trust or love anyone, Granger."_

_Draco stood up in retaliation, "That's not entirely true!" but to no avail. He was not heard. The moment had long passed and he was only a shadow in Blaise's memory. Maybe it was true of his character then, but what did Blaise know of his character? Only Hermione knew the eternal rocks beneath._

"_Do you know, I've even given it a name." Hermione said, "Cariad. It's welsh, it fit, and once something fits, it's hard to replace with something els –" _

"_Cariad," Draco breathed. The only piece of information he had so far of his child. He was tempted to run fearing the responsibility, and he did initially run when Hermione told him. Nevertheless, the revelation was a stumbling stone, one which forced him to look back and realise the differences between his younger and present self, the chasm between what he was and what he could be. 'Thou mayest' after all. _

"_Love doesn't exist." Blaise said, cutting her off. "Self interest exists. Attachment based on personal gain exists. Complacency exists. But not love."_

_Draco recognised that statement straight away. It was one from the Slytherin boys' canon years ago, one Blaise had introduced in fourth year to describe Draco's involvement with several other students. Draco took it as validation and the phrase kind of stuck. It wasn't until he travelled around France he realised who Blaise had plagiarised the line from: some crazy French poet with the most dazzling life._

"_Love needs to be reinvented." Draco turned to Hermione and smiled, know-it-all. She was aware of Zabini's plagiarism and called him out on it._

"_Love will not come from an invention, Hermione. You have a choice between the lesser and greater evil." Blaise sat silent for some time. "You will do a good thing getting rid." He said carefully. "You've only one life, so save yourself."_

_Draco did not like what Blaise was suggesting. It was not Blaise's place to give advice; his place was always to stand there and made observations. Never suggestions. Though he understood the basis of Blaise's suggestion, he resented it and it should have been that moment he should have informed him. Not give Draco a memory six and a half years too late. _

"_I don't care about myself all that much at the moment."_

"_You care about him, though. You want to hate him, but you still care. You have no idea the punishment he will get if someone decides to brush the dust off the Malfoy family tree. Would you want his blood on your hands." _

_Draco scowled, biting the side of his lip as he kneeled before Granger, looking at her tearing eyes that narrowed. The idea of being a father had been slowly growing on him. _

"_Would I want both our blood on my hands as an alternative?" Hermione equally levelled._

"_The lesser of two evils, Hermione." Blaise said as he extinguished the fire between them._

He still sat knelt before her as the darkness crept upon them both, "Your blood." He said as if to refute Blaise's advice_._

He was still knelt when the next memory filled the empty space around him. He did not move, but sullenly looked on ahead, trying again to recognise the setting once more.

_The grating sounds of trains approaching and leaving platforms could be heard above the general hubbub of the London area. He broke his sullen stare to confirm his guess. It was indeed King's Cross Station. Judging by the amount of students he recognised, this was the end of Christmas holidays the year he left Hogwarts. _

_He looked over his shoulder to see Blaise peering over Parkinson's head to the corner of the station entrance. There sat Hermione weeping, wiping her tears on the sleeve of her coat. Draco stood to full height ready for another exchange to take place between Blaise and Hermione, but Blaise walked on, nodding in agreement with something Pansy had said._

Again the scene dissolved and Draco was confused by trying to understand Blaise's motivations to include such a brief memory. He cocked his head to the left as a new scene emerged from the darkness.

"_He's beneath you, Granger." Blaise commented, scratching his ear, "I'm surprised it's lasted for as long as it has done." They were seated in a small living room that was painted in the most garish orange colour. Draco winced seeing a Chudley Cannons poster on the far wall. This was definitely Weasel's most humble abode. _

"_Thanks for your vote of confidence, it's appreciated." Hermione sarcastically replied, conjuring a drape over the offending Cannons poster Draco guessed they had been speaking of a moment ago. Blaise was right, Weasley was earths upon earths beneath Hermione._

"_He asked me to marry him last night." Hermione said, as if it was an off-handed comment. _

_Blaise lowered his eyebrows, "You've only been going out for two years though?"_

"_That's why I've asked for a year engagement period." She rubbed the top of her forehead with her forefinger._

"_Why put yourself through this?"_

"_It's the right thing to do, its how it's supposed to be. Have a relationship, get engaged, get married…"_

"_Have children?"_

_Hermione shook her head, "Don't even start."_

"_You're kidding yourself, Granger. Weasley's obviously some long-term rebound, how can you stand speaking to him everyday? Isn't it dull?"_

_Draco snorted, agreeing with Blaise._

_Hermione was not impressed, "I enjoy being the clever one in the relationship. He's reliable, he's caring. Yes, a little dull sometimes… really dull actually… but that's beside the point. He cares about me." She chewed the inside of her lip, deep in thought, "At first I thought he was just a rebound of some sort. I don't know…"_

"_You still think about him then." Blaise said, looking down as he did so. Draco turned to Hermione._

"_For a while I did. Even for sometime after the trial, but I went back to my parent's old house some months after – That holiday I took? Anyway, I took a look around the old place, all these childhood pictures of me – gone. Nothing of my past was there anymore. I had to watch my childhood disappear when I cast that spell. I thought it was only going to be temporary," She looked up at the ceiling to prevent a tear from escaping the corner of her eye, "Now I can never experience placing pictures of my own child up on the walls as my parents did."_

"_You don't know for sure yet." Blaise reassured. _

"_Come on, Blaise, I've been with Ron for two years like you said. Nothing, not even a late period. I looked in some book of Ginny's and it said a witch who terminates her pregnancy will be unable to conceive again. Some fucking curse or the like. It's why Voldemort's mother had to go through with the pregnancy; she just abandoned the baby instead."_

_Draco felt the blood completely drain from his face. His heart practically punched his ribcage in reaction._

"_That's just an old witches tale, don't believe in that tripe. It could just be Ron." Blaise suggested. _

_Hermione snorted, "No, the Weasleys are all fertile, you know that... No. I cut my own flesh and blood clean out of my body, Blaise. I bled bits of broken baby for two weeks to save his life. Do you understand? I threw us in a clinical waste box. He threw me into garbage. And him… I don't even know where he's ended up."_

The pensieve spit Draco out. He stumbled back and ran his fingers through his hair, his gaze never leaving the pensieve basin.

**000000000000**

_There he is again_. _The white fox_. Hermione stood by the kitchen window with a mug of tea cupped in both hands. It was a cold day, one which pulled loose wool of grey fog over the land. She took a sip whilst watching this fox strut across her garden, nosing the ground as if it was trying to scourge the ground to find some earthed secret, something to bite and maul in its sharp teeth. The warmth from her tea obscured her view of the strange fox momentarily, but a moment was all that was needed for the fox to disappear again.

She sighed. This was the third time she had seen the fox in two days. All three sightings were brief, surreal; like moments from a dream that was just about to end. It had followed her from her bookstore, its thick tail lagging behind its quick body. She was sure it had followed her into the garden, but it was no transfiguration of some intrusive reporter, as it had climbed through the wards protecting her new home.

She placed the mug of tea on the counter before opening the kitchen door. Hermione had been here before nearly six years ago, opening the door to such fog. Like the smoke encountered three days beforehand, the fog had pushed her into a world of silhouettes she could not quite make out. She did not fully understand why she opened the door, but she left it wide open before taking her tea into the living room.

Opening the door was merely a simple gesture: just an invitation for that feral creature. After all, the intimate secrets the fox hungered for were never buried in the garden, but contained within the house, hidden underneath Hermione's bed.

She opened a book and tried to read on from her last bookmarked page.

Before she had read six lines of text, Hermione heard the distinct noise of paws against linoleum and nodded to herself. Just as opening the door was a simple gesture, so was entering her house: the admission of proof she needed. The sound of rain dispersing the fog.

The sound of paws against linoleum changing to the sound of shoes against carpet.

"I guess the ministry doesn't know of your animagus status." She said without taking her eyes away from the page.

"You guess correctly. Keeping it a secret has saved nine lives, so don't tell anyone about it. I'm on my last life." He said, perching himself on the edge of the sofa.

She put down her book and looked to him. His face was soft, apologetic even. Natural light came bouncing in from the windows, catching the hair on his forearm, causing them to shimmer as though they were unicorn hair. She picked up her wand.

"You could get help from the Ministry for your little Death Eater problem, you know." Hermione suggested half-heartedly, swivelling her wand around in her hands.

Draco snorted, "Hardly. The problem with the Ministry is they're just another gang who will only help you when it suits them; they don't follow their own rules. If it was up to them, they'd sell me to Goyle for fifty sickles – anything for an easy life."

"Goyle's definitely alive then?"

"Yes, but Parkinson's dead."

Hermione was shocked, "But the newspapers-"

"The newspapers are full of shit. They exist to control the masses. Cuckold those who gave their lives for freedom."

Hermione silently agreed.

Draco cracked his knuckles absent-mindedly, "Look Hermione, I'm sorry I ran off like that the other day, it was a – a bit of a shock."

"No, I understand." She said, not wishing to converse of a subject which made them both feel uncomfortable, "Blaise said you'd visited his house… It's fine, don't worry. All in the past and everything. It's fine, honestly."

"You're a filthy liar, you know that?"

She rubbed the inner corner of her eye and politely smiled at him, shrugging, "What more can I tell you?"

"The little details, without them we're nothing."

Hermione hesitated, "…I think it's best we leave the matter."

"Don't. For three hours I thought I had a kid, and I admit it, I kind of liked the idea."

Hermione shook her head and looked away, "What a mess."

"Oi," He muttered, clasping her chin to face him, "It is a bit of a mess and I'm sorry it was me who caused it. If I had any idea –"

"You would have told me exactly what Blaise advised. We were just kids caught in the eye of the storm."

"Maybe, I don't know Hermione. But whatever happened, we are linked by blood lost."

"Talk about insult to injury," Hermione tried to joke, "Bound to you regardless."

Draco snorted, "It's not that bad, is it?... Maybe it is," He said, taking his hand away, "I still would like to know every little detail, I feel responsible."

"I would have thought I absolved you of any responsibility." Hermione said.

"I cared about you; you were the only person that I could talk to. I'm obviously going to feel responsible for ruining your life, it seems."

"The best thing you can do is to just leave it. Carry on with our lives, forget about it. After all, it was just one night."

"I guess."

"It's for the best," Hermione shrugged.

But Draco would persist regardless. He was tired of running, that revelation, that particular stumbling block had also made him realise how tired he was of it all. He rubbed his eyes, his throat thick and looked at Hermione. She pulled some loose strands of hair behind her ears. Her earthy beauty and vulnerability at that moment compelled him to pull her to him and hold her in his arm. She resisted leaning in the crook of his shoulder.

"Please forgive me," He said into her hair whilst gazing out of the window, "I won't leave again... I can't."

"Because of that letter?" Hermione asked, trying to diverge anything else she imagined he could say. She didn't want to hear anything of the sort. It was too soon, like applying vinegar to an open wound.

He paused, casting his eyes down upon the mass of wavy hair which obscured her face, realising her question was more than a subtle hint. _Back-off_. It was true he needed her help deciphering the letter, but that wasn't his primary reason for staying. He stroked the side of her arm and resumed gazing off into the distance, unable to answer with a lie.

She still resisted the embrace, not wishing to rest her head against his chest, it was far too close and she did not want to hear the rhythm to which his heart beat against hers. The sound of two planets dancing. Too easy to remember what was lost to the veil of death willingly.

Like hearing the machinery of heaven crush down heavily upon her.


	6. Pay in Kind

**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Six: Pay in Kind**

A small piece of hot ash hit the back of Draco's hand as he pulled the cigarette from his dry lips. He flinched and flicked the ash off his hand, rubbing the spot with his index finger. He looked back to the letter of ancient runes and sighed. His eyes were sore; he could barely keep them open. It had already been two hours of inaccurate translating with no viable answers. The books he had been using were of no real use; full of pretentious academic vocabulary and phrasing which confused him more than teach him anything of the runic language. He licked his lips before stubbing out the cigarette.

"That's enough for tonight." He said to himself, leaning back into the hard skeleton of the chair. His spine clashed against the wood, provoking a disgruntled face. He bent forward over the desk propping his upper body, the bones again clashing with wood. Draco sat upright, clearly defeated by the furniture, and rubbed his elbows.

"Why don't you just ask her for help?" Blaise asked as he stood in the doorway.

"She gave me these books; she clearly doesn't want anything to do with me past book-lending," Draco replied yawning. His back hurt.

"I guess you can't really blame her."

"You would know more about it than I." Draco ruefully commented as he stood up.

He resented the obvious intimate friendship Blaise and Hermione had developed over the last couple of years. He felt as though his rightful position had been made redundant. The bond between the two was enough for Draco to storm back into the obscurity of exile, but that option was no longer viable given the circumstances. Though he was hardly to care for the Malfoy family honour in the years that followed the war, his place in the Black ancestry intrigued him. He supposed that same intrigue was what led to the inevitable union of his parents.

"_It was a perfect match, a perfect wedding_", Draco remembered Narcissa saying when he asked her about it. _Her eyebrow rose slightly to match the shallow smirk as she tilted her head upwards to scrutinise her reflection in the vanity mirror. He was a little boy at the time, quite alone in the vast hallways and rooms of the manor._

"_Why don't I have a brother or sister?" Draco had asked, clambering onto her lap, vying for her attention._

"_Because we follow in the footsteps of your father's family traditions," Narcissa commented, refusing to look Draco in the face as she touched the side of her cheek, the previous smirk fading somewhat._

"_Mama, is that why you don't talk about your sister?" He demanded, tugging on her robes._

"_I talk of Bella all the time," Narcissa said looking down into the face of her son, a face which replicated his father's completely._

"_No, the other one, Mama!" He argued, unable to pronounce her name. _

"_It's Mother, Draco, not Mama." Lucius interrupted as he entered the room. Draco frowned, looking up to Narcissa for confirmation. She nodded whilst tightly pursing her lips, her eyebrow raised and her nose tightened as if she had smelt something rotten to the core. Narcissa lifted Draco from her lap and placed him on the floor beside her, enough room between them to please Lucius, but close enough as if the umbilical cord still connected her and Draco together. _

A cord which Draco snipped away at eventually after continued grooming by his father. And eventually it was explained why Andromeda was never spoken about, but again it was his father who told him the story as Narcissa dutifully nodded along. It was as if Lucius did not trust her, fearing she would weave a fantastical family saga that was neither practical or served a use in painting a complete black and white picture for Draco to model his future thoughts on. After all, they lived in the Malfoy household, not the Noble House of Black.

"What does Andromeda hold possession of now?" Draco asked, a curious thought passing his mind.

"You'd have to ask Granger," Blaise answered, ignoring his previous comment.

Draco bit the inside of his cheek whilst gritting his teeth, "I told you already, she doesn't want anything to do with me."

"Well I'm not playing your little messenger." Blaise sighed, looking down as he rubbed his toes across the carpet.

"What's the matter with you?" Draco asked, it wasn't like Blaise to be so petulant.

"The Ministry. I'm due a full inspection next week."

"They're still carrying out the bi-yearly inspections?"

"Yes, unfortunately. This time they've been kind enough to give me a week's notice." Blaise shrugged, the sarcastic undertone of his utterance fully realising itself in the brief silence that followed. Nearly all Slytherin alumni, friends and acquaintances of Death Eaters were subjected to two inspections every year. Ministry officials would interview their employers, colleagues whilst searching the contents of any house and business owned by the person in question. It was humiliating, even more so because it had gone on for five years. Their lives had become catalogued, arguably battery-farmed.

"When do you need me to go?" Draco asked, tidying the opened books, notepad and pens, arranging them into orderly towers upon the desk. Keeping his hands busy while he thought of somewhere he could stay for a while, the spells he cast with Granger's wand would not protect him past certain boundaries.

"By tomorrow evening."

Draco bit the inside of his cheek. _Not enough time_.

**000000000000**

She was looking at the small table in front of her as she sat on the kitchen floor, head against the cupboard door directly below the sink. Hermione wasn't quite sure as to why she was crying. Silent tears had sullied the document in her hands, and it was only the sound of a particularly large teardrop splattering onto the decree that brought her out of her trance. She blinked, sniffed and exhaled deeply as she used her finger to draw circles from the various shallow puddles on the document.

Isn't this what she had been waiting sixteen long weeks for? Hermione tapped her fingers across the decree briefly before placing it on the floor beside her. She wiped the remaining tears from her cheeks and brought her legs close, resting her chin upon her knees. This is what she wanted. _So why so sad?_ She asked herself.

Because she had failed and made a mistake. Like the marriage had failed and was a mistake.

Hermione nuzzled into her knees, her eyes peering over the fabric of her jeans. She remembered a strange encounter whilst walking by a farm in the early months of her marriage to Ron. An old farmer was walking towards her with a bulge of a small fox buttoned into the top of his jacket and she gasped. The fox cub looked at her curiously with its nose struggling against the collar of the man's jacket and the farmer laughed at her surprise, scratching the fox's ear. He asked if she wanted it, offering the fox to her for a fiver.

Hermione was tempted. Crookshanks had died the previous year, and Ron had agreed to buy another cat for their new home. An agreement that was ignored and forgotten, nevertheless, at the time Hermione was looking around for a suitable creature. But a fox? With all its complexities and unpredictable nature? Housed in a home in which it would constantly be lost amongst the orange-painted walls? She walked on, politely declining. She felt as if she had thrown that orphan fox into the future as she let it out of her life, quickly hurrying back to Molly's for Sunday roast.

She sighed, combing her hair behind her ears as picked herself up off the floor and plucked the decree off the linoleum between her thumb and forefinger. Hermione then rolled the paper back into the sheathe it had been delivered in and tossed it onto the kitchen counter in the same manner she imagined the old farmer had thrown the fox into the wild. Carefully so the impact would not damage the object, but thrown hard enough to know it would never be seen again.

She picked up her wand and pulled a shawl around herself before wandering outside into the garden cloaked in cold February night. She looked up to the bright moon, confused by the hazy halo-ish glow that both simultaneously decorated and obscured its full shape. Hermione rubbed her sore eyes, thinking the previous tears had muddied her sight, tricking her into mistakenly catching the moon out of balance.

"No, your eyes are fine. I think it's just the light of the moon refracted from dust particles or something." A voice said from behind her.

She turned and nodded, accepting Draco's presence. Hermione was too tired to argue against his intrusion; instead she instigated some kind of conversation, "Doesn't it look like the moon has split open the atmosphere?" She asked him.

Draco looked up, tilting his head to see what she saw. The clouds that surrounded the moon were bumpy, broken and resembled a dry and cracked piece of road. As if the moon was a ball of pure force that had fallen from the celestial plane and fractured the clouds before bouncing up again. Like a rock skimmed upon water, leaving slow ripples in its wake.

"Yeah, I guess so." He answered before manoeuvring the straps on his bag from his left shoulder onto his right. The books inside made the bag a heavy bundle to carry around.

Hermione noticed the bag, "Where are you going?"

"Oh, I don't know yet," He answered truthfully pulling out a cigarette packet from his jeans pocket. His departure from Blaise's was hurried by the unexpected early arrival of Ministry Officials. He picked what was necessary, clambered out of the back window and into the night, not risking to apparate until there was a good several miles worth of distance that separated him from Blaise's home.

He shivered involuntarily. The walk had been a long one; the hostile cold sticking to his face, running down the front of his neck and settling itself into crevice of his collarbones. He did not even know what he had hoped to achieve by coming to Hermione's in all honesty, but there he stood, his collars upturned to form a flimsy shield from the abyss of the night.

"Do you want to come inside?" Hermione asked, concerned as she caught sight of his dry, blue-ish lips. She had tried so hard to avoid his presence as of late in an attempt to bury him back into the mass graves of her past memories. It was as if she had encountered the old farmer again, and again she stood, about to decline the offer to befriend the fox, unable to deal with the thought of coming back home with such a feral animal.

As Hermione looked at Draco, she wondered what would have happened if she had paid the man and come back home with that armful of fox. If Hermione thought hard about the choices she had made, cataloguing her mistakes and failures, her last mistake was indeed refusing the old man's offer.

Draco paused, fiddling with the cigarette in his fingers, "I don't know if that's such a good idea, I just came by to give you back those books –"

"Go inside," She told him. It was an order, she had turned back a year and made a different choice.

"Are you sure?" Draco asked, slightly bemused at her insistence.

Her lips slightly tilted upward at one side, "Yeah... I think so, anyway."

He shuffled to the door, unsure as to whether the invitation was a joke. He turned to her again when he reached the threshold, wondering why she wasn't following him in.

"I'll come inside, just give me a minute. I've something I want to do." She explained. Draco nodded before disappearing into the house.

Hermione turned to face the fields outside her garden, just about distinguishable by the light of the bright moon. She pulled out a five pound note from her jeans pocket and tapped it with her wand, folding the note into the shape of a paper aeroplane. Hermione quickly whispered the coordinates of the farm's location to the aeroplane before gently blowing the aeroplane, encouraging it to fly.

She still had reservations as to what exactly was entailed when allowing a fox loose in her house. She was still afraid to let this fox from the past come hurdling back into her arms, still unwilling to give him anything more than a home to reside in. It was only a small tentative step, but in a different direction.

Hermione watched the small aeroplane of money begin its long flight to that old man and smiled; at least this time, she resolved she would not make the same mistake twice.

**000000000000**

It was the sound of a door closing which kicked Draco out of his dreams. His eyelids had prised apart and he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, not blinking for a while. Soon his eyes began to water and he blinked, causing the small amount of water to travel quickly down into each ear. He wiped the trails away with the back of his hand before picking the moistened sleep from his eyes. Draco's thoughts turned to the night before as he yawned and stretched, hands clenching the headboard of the single bed for support as he did so.

The conversation had been brief, but at least there had been some talk. Hermione had steered the conversation along so as to avoid anything too emotionally taxing, something which Draco could understand given the time of his arrival. She expressed her utter disgust when he told her of the Ministry Officials visit, exclaiming: _They all think freedom should surely include social responsibility, but freedom is surely freedom; when you start to put restrictions on it then it ceases to be!_ Draco had shrugged, he agreed with her, but he was too disillusioned with authority to complain about it anymore.

He swung his body so he sat on the side of the bed, his toes touching the cold floor. He shivered again in response and pulled on the clothes he wore the night beforehand, tentatively walking across the room and onto the landing. There were two other rooms upstairs, and both rooms were obscured behind closed doors before him; he tiredly fumbled with the doorknob of the nearest door hoping it would be the bathroom.

No such luck.

There was some consolation in the fact that it was Hermione's bedroom he stumbled into, well, he guessed it was Hermione's bedroom as there were only three rooms upstairs and one of them had to be the bathroom. However, the walls were blank and white and there was nothing of her personality within the room apart from huge piles of books along one wall. The cold sunlight from outside trickled in through half-opened curtains, leaving splashes of pale gold colour across the walls and wardrobe in the far right corner. He was about to close the door on the room, but a gold clasp of an ornate box peeking out from beneath the bed shone brightly at him, signalling to him like some beacon from a nearby lighthouse.

He nibbled the inside of his lip, rubbing the forefinger of his left hand with the thumb of his right. _All that glitters is not gold, Malfoy_, he reminded himself, knowing the beacon in a lighthouse is shone to avert sailors from clashing against the stormy rocks of a dangerous coast. Despite the warning, he found himself unexplainably drawn to this one object in the room.

"Hermione?" He called out, eyes still locked onto the gleaming object. When there was no reply, he walked straight into the heart of the room. Hermione had left her wand on the bedside cabinet which he picked up, realising wherever she had gone, she intended to return within the hour. _Just enough time_.

Draco kneeled down on the floor and pulled the wooden box out from the strewn bed sheets, observing it closely. He likened the object in his hands to that of Pandora's Box; something incredibly lethal, having the power to shatter the illuminations of gold bouncing around the walls of the room. Nevertheless, by likening the object to Pandora's Box only tempted him more to open up the item. He remembered fixing the vanishing cabinet in his sixth year and his defiance when asked by Voldemort why he had failed to break open Hermione's being in seventh year. _It takes more time finding ways to open a person than a cabinet._

Indeed it did, but it this was another box.

"_Alohomora._" He commanded the wand. The lock in the clasp clicked as if a key had been turned within it.

_A box has six sides, inside and out_, and it was easy enough to get inside this particular wooden object he thought as he touched the clasp.

The lid of the box groaned guiltily as he undid the golden clasp and split open the object. He immediately found it strange there were spells cast upon this box to punish intruders such as him. The contents of the object unleashed a distinct smell; one of which was hard for Draco to describe, but seemed to belong to another home, another life before being placed in this clinical room. There were several compartments and trays to the box and Draco guessed the box was initially used to store jewellery.

The first tray held nothing of real interest to Draco, only some unworn jewellery which he deducted must have been given as an unwanted gift. He knew Hermione enough to realise she held no importance for such material items. Draco carefully lifted the tray and opened a smaller compartment within the second tray, the seemingly deafening noise of his invasion made him wince. The size of the compartment was in proportion to the vast importance to the details which lay within. There was a muggle passport, a folded birth certificate, and some other important and necessary papers for one reason or another.

He was tempted to open up the passport and birth certificate out of curiosity, but decided to leave the formalities of such documents alone as he was aware of the borrowed time he was working within. There was one more tray beneath the compartment in the scrambled scraps of life shoved within the ornate box. Draco gently lifted the tray and set it on top of the other removed tray. Again there is a little wooden compartment, but this time it is placed upon the base of the box.

Before Draco opened the compartment, he already knew whatever lay within the compartment was the undeniable scavenged remains of what shaped and defined Hermione's life as an adult. _This is it,_ he said to himself as pulled out a folded photograph. Draco was a magician pulling out a rabbit from a hat.

At first he could not make out what the photograph was of, it did not move, but lay silent in the stillness. A grainy grey-ish blob sat in the centre of the picture, trapped by the curved trapezium which framed it. And then it gradually dawned upon him as he made out the letters from numbers at the top of the photograph.

_GRANGER, HERMIONE. IST TRIMESTER: 11 WEEKS._

He looked at the picture beneath again and as clouds form a recognisable shape that are only realised when explained, he finally recognised the shape within the photograph. He frowned, sharply taking in a deep breath. He fidgeted slightly, overwhelmed with a sticky mixture of adrenaline and grief, not knowing how to calm down again.

Draco forced himself to remember he was in a room which he shouldn't have entered, and resolved to return the contents of the box. However, he could not prize his fingers away from the photograph, let alone place it back within the compartment he found it within. Draco looked back in the compartment noticing a small piece of parchment underneath, wondering if it was the same parchment he saw in Hermione's memories. He picked the piece of parchment up with his right hand, unfolding on the floor, still unable to let go of the photograph in his left.

_The frost makes a flower,_

_The dew makes a star,_

_The dead bell,_

_The dead bell._

_Somebody's done for._

It was the note he had quickly scrawled to Hermione when he was forcibly summoned and brought back to the Manor in his final year of Hogwarts.

"Why would you keep this?" He asked aloud, remembering how well he was tortured for his failure before writing that particular note. Draco carefully folded the note again before placing it back in the compartment he had plucked it from. He then folded the photograph, but was unable to return it to the ornate box. He just couldn't. For a fortnight Draco had wondered how his child had moulded itself within Hermione's body, and having the photograph in his hands, he could not abandon it in the space of two minutes.

With the greatest of care, he slipped the photograph in the back pocket of his jeans. _You must pay in kind, Draco_, he reminded himself. He remembered being cursed as a child; he had removed a little locket from his mother's jewellery box and punished by the box accordingly. Lucius had laughed when the boy had approached him with his hands sewn together, openly crying.

"_You have to pay in kind, Draco, that's the way to get around it." He said before removing both curse and locket from Draco's hands_.

What item did he own to pay back in kind, Draco wondered. He had nothing of material possession to offer, having constantly been on the run. He tapped the side of his forehead with the wand and pulled out the silvery strands of a memory which he often relapsed into at certain times. After conjuring two small vials, he again pulled out another memory from his head, so Hermione would understand his actions and was made aware of the details he had to omit from his statement during his trial.

He placed the vials into the compartment he stole from, thus paying in kind. Draco left the box as he found it; alone and seemingly uncompromised. Hermione would build a glass wall to block out the sun between them if she knew he'd pried into her existence, and he didn't want that after the progress made yesterday. He wanted to keep her on his side of the looking-glass.

He was about to stand up, but realised leaving the photograph in his back pocket was dangerous, easy enough to lose or destroy. Draco pulled off his jumper, took the photograph from his back pocket and used the wand to bury the photograph within the skin of his chest. He winced as he did so, the image burning directly over his heart as it stowed itself within his body. He looked down; only a tiny scar remained, smaller than the ones that had stayed past the war and torture, almost matching the one left on his forearm. Draco placed the wand on the bedside cabinet and closed the door behind him to mirror how it looked before he disturbed the room.

He leaned on the banisters of the landing, looking down upon the stairs, playing with the jumper in his hands for a while.

"Hello?" Hermione called out, entering the house.

"Up here." Draco said, loud enough for her to hear.

Hermione stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at him, "Put your shirt on."

"Offended?" Draco asked, not wishing to let on the little ebbs of pain and sadness he still felt within the cage of his chest.

"Slightly," She said, tracing patterns onto the banister with her finger, vibrations which Draco could feel through his forearms.

"Stay offended, Granger." He laughed, throwing down his jumper so it fell upon her head, loosening her hair from the confines the ponytail she had styled it in. Hermione shook her head disapprovingly as she threw the jumper back at him, _too playful_.

"Seriously, put it on, I'm taking you somewhere." She said as he leaned across to catch the piece of clothing.

His eyes narrowed as he pulled on his jumper, "Where?"

Hermione dug her hand into her bag for the letter of ancient runes. She saw the letter earlier on in the morning; it was peeking out of the quickly packed bag Draco had thrown beside the kitchen door. Draco wasn't lying when he said the letter was more than a lifetime's problems to translate; it was unlike anything she had come across before. But it was the initials scrawled at the bottom of the parchment which led Hermione to visit Andromeda after swearing never to have anything to do with the woman again.

Hermione pulled the letter out of her bag along with a set of rusty keys, "12 Grimmauld Place."


	7. See My Hands

This chapter took long to submit, didn't it? It's currently 4:20am here, so beware of proofreading errors. If I have the time tomorrow morning, I'll read this again with a fresh head and make changes as necessary, but if not, definitely in the next couple of days. I just really wanted to get this chapter out there. It is a bit of a filler chapter, and I'm not sure if I've written the sexual references correctly to fit the mood of the story, but like I said. Will make changes if any are needed.

Other than that: please read, review, and goodnight!

P.s. I think this is the only chapter Draco does not smoke one single cigarette. Maybe he'll take a leaf out of my book and swap eating crap & smoking filth for exercise and sprouts... and then get bored after the third day, resume chain-smoking and collect take-away menus. Circle of life.

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* * *

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**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Seven: See my Hands**

He gazed out of the car window, watching from the passenger's side as road lights temporarily illuminated the path ahead. The night was a bloom of pitch-black flowers. Draco's hands lay limp in his lap as he leaned back into the seat, his head rarely turning away from the passenger window. His body was tired. Draco could already feel the muscles in his legs tighten and churn in a process in which they tore themselves stronger; as if they were snakes shedding skin. He could have alleviated some of the pain by pushing his fingers into his skin, but Draco was too engrossed in the scenes that quickly flicked by the car as Hermione drove on.

Hermione smiled to herself after glancing in his direction when she stopped the car at a set of traffic lights. As a child she had always enjoyed car journeys; she guessed it was the feeling of being in motion, watching movement zip past the window whilst remaining absolutely still. Such journeys gave her time to mull over estranged thoughts that had escaped the neat ordering of her mind.

"Do you mind if I put some music on?" She asked Draco. When he was alive, Hermione's father preferred car journeys to be silent, but music acted as a dream catcher for her and pulled her into a timeless place where she could drift as weightless as she would be if she was on the moon.

Draco shrugged, "No, I guess not." He was glad she asked though, secretly fearing hours of awkward silence after the day's events.

She leaned across, opening the glove compartment and pulled out a tape at random from the messy pile that inhabited the compartment. Draco closed the compartment again as Hermione fed the car's old tape player the mix tape. Keeping her parents' car was something Ron never understood; he found it morbid and impractical. Hermione didn't agree; she needed to stay grounded as she never could stand flying, and the car provided the perfect practical solution. When Hermione led Draco to the car earlier on that morning, he asked why they were taking muggle transportation and she merely shrugged in response. Truth be told, Hermione wanted to physically travel to destination instead of disappearing and appearing. Sometimes she felt as if parts of her soul splinched whenever she apparated.

A soft melody began to play while Hermione manoeuvred the car through dark roads, turning on the full beam headlights so the surroundings revealed themselves, and then switching to dipped headlights when she spotted a car driving past them on the other side of the road. Draco wanted to ask why she did this, but resolved to ask later as he had been rendered still by the lulling song. He paid no attention to the first verse, but from the eighth line onwards he felt his soul had been half-translated and sung back to him.

_And I will die all alone_.

_And when I arrive I won't know anyone_.

Draco gritted his teeth as his eyes softened, giving way to a sea that was just held back by the dams of his eyelids. Hermione sighed inwardly as both hands tightly gripped the steering wheel, realising she had picked the wrong mix tape to play. Nevertheless the song was that of a siren, impossible to keep from playing, so she let it be and both reflected back on the journey that had led them to this road so past the evening dark.

**000000000000**

"Merlin above," Draco managed to whisper upon entering 12 Grimmauld House. He fought the urge to cough as he stepped into the hallway, struggling to keep the physical resistance to the decrepit smell within the bowels of his throat. It was a grim old place after all. Dark and gloomy; the walls of the hallway were like the skin of a leper gently peeling away. Like some victim suffering from the bubonic plague. There was nothing at all gothic of this place as he was expecting; this house had certainly past the skeleton of the gothic and was now simply grotesque.

"So much for the ancestral House of Black," he commented, his lips curling at the sight of the gnarly troll's foot.

"Mm," Hermione acknowledged, tilting her head to examine the upper floors and ceiling as she walked on, "It could have been cleaned and repaired to its original condition, but –"

"Filth! Filth in the house of my fathers! Oh, what shame!"

Hermione uttered a curse that could not be heard and jogged to the screaming portrait of Walburga Black, fighting to close the sprung open curtains. Draco covered his ears with his hands and his face contorted in sheer disgust. The vindictive screeching abruptly shattered the silent decay and the vibrations caused were spores of viruses shooting into his ear drums. He watched Hermione try pull the curtains of the portrait back together as if they were two opposing sides of magnets being forced to touch each other.

After great effort on Hermione's part, she managed to seal the curtains over the portrait, beads of sweat fastening her fine baby hairs to her forehead. The portrait was reduced to mumbling insults before silencing itself in petulance. Though Hermione dared not even sigh, she stuck her middle finger up defiantly, pushing the gesture up in the air a couple of times for effect. Draco shook his head, mouth agape. He would not wish to hear that ever again, it was worse than receiving a howler.

"Up here," Hermione mouthed as she pointed to the narrow staircase. Draco nodded and stepped forward, the floor underneath creaked. "Quietly!" She mouthed angrily before turning away and toeing her way up the stairs.

Draco followed her along the staircase, keeping his eye distracted from the mounted heads of house-elves by staring at the bottom of Hermione's brown coat. It swayed subtly side to side with each step she climbed; he wanted to reach out and finger the intricate stitching that formed the bottom, but did not. Draco feared she would feel the tentative touch and hex him all the way back down the stairs. It would hardly be appropriate, he understood, but all he wanted was to feel the raised pattern against the gentle rub of his fingertips.

Hermione felt more relaxed when she stepped off the stairs and found her feet firmly on the first floor of this damned building. Walburga Black's wails still resounded in her ears; the sum of five years worth of unspoken disapproval and fury. What else could Hermione have expected from the portrait? She kneaded the arch of her right eyebrow with her forefinger before leading Draco into the drawing room. She wanted to rest for a minute as her arms were aching.

"What the fuck was _that_?" He asked, closing the door behind him.

"_That_ was your great aunt Walburga Black." She said, leaning against a dusty table, stretching her arms in front of her. The room which had been furnished during her last visit was now bare. It enhanced the disturbing power of the tapestry even more.

Draco had nothing in turn to reply; instead, he looked around the room, trying to find Walburga's image woven into the wall of tapestry that enclosed them. It made him feel uneasy as he put so much effort into distancing himself from such places. Nevertheless, he was now confronted directly by the heart of the noblest pureblood household. And it was dark, barbaric, dangerous. This foreign house was nothing like the Malfoy Manor; there were no white peacocks and purple silk here, but Draco did not miss them. Nor would he ever return to the peacocks and grand gardens of his childhood, that was a time of ignorance and now he wished to clean his soul from such wretched beginnings.

Draco folded his arms across his torso as he followed the ancestry around the room from the gnarly roots of the tree trunk to far-reaching branches which seemed to strangle both the walls and occupants of the room. The Malfoy Manor had a similar woven family tree which decorated the far corner of the first-floor hallway, but it was not near elaborately macabre as this. The Malfoy's family line was modelled upon a pear tree and keeping in with tradition, only listed the fore-fathers of Lucius. No one was scorched from the tree as no one ever defied the Malfoy tradition and canon.

Draco stopped upon reading his own name.

"You're the last to be recorded." Hermione murmured thoughtfully. She had watched him follow the lines as she grasped the edge of the table with her palms, putting weight upon them to try relieve her upper arms.

Draco turned to her, for a moment he had forgotten she was there, "But that child… shouldn't he be the last on this branch?"

Hermione lifted her hands from the table and rubbed them together to dispose of the tufts of dust that had collected in the crevasses of her damp palms. She bit the corner of her lip whilst looking at the collection of books which were scattered in untidy piles to the left of the room where the bookshelf was rooted, but now removed. The disappearance of furniture was of no surprise to Hermione as Harry had stripped some of the house bare when the war had ended, taking the antiques to his new home with Ginny. Hermione warned Harry of taking such items from such an ancient household, and he laughed it off in her presence, but took heed of her words by taking each item to the Mad Eye to be sure there were no lingering curses upon the objects before relocating them.

"Teddy wouldn't be on there…" Hermione began as she rummaged through the pile of books upon the floor before clutching the same book she had opened six years ago, "Because Andromeda was blasted off, it would mean Tonks and Teddy would also have no place upon the family tree. She effectively forfeited their place because she betrayed the family…"

"But I've the name of my father, not my mother... Why am I still included?" He asked, more to himself than to be answered by Hermione.

The book pulled itself away from Hermione's grasp and a flurry of pages ensued as it hovered above her squatting form. She threw her hands in the air whilst rolling her eyes, waiting for the book to find the correct page that could answer Draco's question. When the book had found its page, Draco plucked it from its stationary hovering position and read.

"What does it say?" Hermione asked, getting up from the floor.

Draco held out his hand, gesturing silence for a few moments before paraphrasing, "It basically says if there is strong approval from the family, the offspring from such a marriage may be included on the family tree… and only when there are limited direct descendents of the family."

"So you were woven into the family tree primarily for inheritance," Hermione reiterated. Walburga must have charmed Draco onto the family tree in the year following Regulus' death. Hermione shook her head; the woman had obviously cared nothing for the individuals of the family so long as the Black family were preserved.

Draco frowned as he scanned the page once more before eyeing the tapestry in front of him, "It makes little sense though. Sirius inherited the property, but he was blasted off the family tree. Potter inherited the property after and he isn't even on the family tree."

"Ministry law overruled any ancient family law in the years following Lord Voldemort's first defeat. When I worked for the law enforcement department, there was an appeal put against the law by the Nott family because they felt their family was losing its ancestry." Hermione explained.

Draco's breath hitched at the mention of Nott. There were so many people whose lives had been skewered by the pivoting spear of the War. He tried to shake Nott from his mind, feeling selfish for doing so, but felt it was necessary to address the after-effects of the War one small detail at a time.

Draco flicked the pages across until he unknowingly came across the same passage which damned Hermione six years prior, "_All offspring of family members are listed on corresponding family trees_… Why wasn't I blasted off each family tree for my relations with you?" He waited for a response from either the book or Hermione, but none came.

Draco looked to Hermione, wondering why she had fallen silent. She was unmoving, her eyes half lidded; the effect made her look as if she was sculpted by Bernini, her still posture fastened into marble as she vacantly gazed at the wall. Draco turned back and again saw his name and place embroidered upon the wall. Realising what painful memory must have been reliving itself inside her head, Draco locked the book between his arm and torso as he placed his hands around Hermione's arms, trying to bring her gaze to the living. By giving half her soul to the past meant she was nothing but a ghost in the present.

Feeling Draco's hands upon her brought her out of her trance, and she shrugged his hands away, stepping back, "No, I'm sorry," Hermione mumbled, turning to face the window. Her forefinger finding the arch of her eyebrow again. She hated herself when her grief surfaced, and feeling as though the affliction was akin to a disease, she questioned herself whether she would heal or die from it. The grief was a curse; it petrified her being whenever confronted. Draco sighed, walking out of the room.

**000000000000**

_So what did you do those three days you were dead?_

_Because this problem is going to last _

_More than the weekend._

Hermione used the ridge below the car window to rest her elbow upon as she rubbed her lip slowly. She licked her lips and tasted the metallic flavour of blood and quickly looked at her forefinger, confused. She immediately picked off the dried spot of blood that burrowed itself in the ridge between nail and skin. Hermione had almost forgotten about the incident and looked to Draco, wondering if he had seen.

He had not. His head was rested against the taught seatbelt; he shifted his body slightly to the side and folded his arms. Car journeys were fast becoming his favourite muggle discovery. He had been in a muggle taxi before out of curiosity, but never in the passenger's seat allowing full sight of the road ahead and the landscape on the side.

_Do I get the gold chariot?_

_Or do I float through the ceiling?_

Hermione drove the car through a road that was enclosed in a long archway entirely constructed from the mingling branches of trees at either side of the lane. Draco had never seen anything like it before. The landscape he walked across earlier that day also had the same effect upon him, and he was glad he was never shown the Uffington Hill early on during his youth as he would never appreciate the impressive beauty of it all.

**000000000000**

"It's fascinating, don't you think" Hermione asked, pulling the sleeves of the thick coat around her hands, clasping it into place with her fingers.

Draco nodded dumbly before drinking a good amount of water from the bottle he had bought along with him, "But has it really been around for that long?" He asked, peering over the hill, more fascinated with the steep decline than the chalk drawing of the horse to the side. He winced as he felt the Veritaserum run through his veins. It irked him he had stolen three drops of the potion to find the truth of himself, but he wanted to be sure. Standing on that hill made him feel as if he was standing up to the Gods, standing face to face with himself, neither Jekyll or Hyde and completely accountable.

He opened his eyes. Seeing the great steep drop from hill to land below made him feel queasy, as did the drive up into this region of high land.

After taking some of Regalus' possessions from 12 Grimmauld Place, Hermione decided she wanted to go for a walk, to shake off some of the dirt and dredge she felt the house had marked upon her. The memories were too vivid; she needed some great gust of wind to wash that dirt away.

"Yeah since the Bronze age apparently, no one knows why though. Probably to mark a tribe or something," Hermione thought aloud, staring at the strong chalked head of the Uffington White Horse. She suddenly felt overwhelmed; so many people had walked upon these hills before her through the countless generations. There was more magic in that than within the trickster confines of wizardry.

A number of crows flew above their head, laughing and shouting in their harsh caws. Hermione instinctively ducked, fearing an attack. Draco laughed; he didn't mind crows so much. He quite liked them, they were intelligently superior to other birds and he respected that cunning quality. Draco looked to the horizon to see crows chase each other, their black bodies contrasted against the grey sky, almost taking on the image of printed words against some dusty page.

As he looked at the crows in awe, Hermione walked away from him, her tread barely audible above the hissing wind. Seeing the Black Family tree again kicked up questions Hermione thought she had already convinced herself that she had answered. She walked across the ancient ditch and disappeared foundations of the Uffington Fort to where the ancient Ridgeway lay. She heard Draco run behind her in the brief silence the wind allowed before it tried to push the land again.

"Hermione!" He shouted, scaring a herd of sheep that were grazing in the bit of farmland to the right side of the Ridgeway pass.

She stopped and turned to him, casually pulling a questioning face. He was tired of her constantly running away. He felt as if she had picked this fort to walk across because she wanted wallow in an environment which reflected her own defence mechanisms. She would have made a great architect, Draco thought, albeit humourlessly.

"Hermione…" He paused as she looked on expectantly, "You did the right thing," Draco finished. He wanted to tell her the truth so she could face it as well. He wanted her to squelch and mould the grief inside her heard into consonants and vowels, tired of this barrier between them.

She turned to look at him, quite surprised, "What?"

"You did the right thing. You know you did the right thing in…" Draco couldn't find any words to fashion the matter, so he was blunt instead, "…in getting rid. So stop punishing yourself."

"I'm not punishing myself." She said as she walked along the Ridgeway, but Draco caught her arm and frowned at her.

She pulled herself away, annoyed, "I'm not!... I just… hate how it's affected me. I don't like how it has shaped my life since. I can't help how it has changed my life either." Hermione said tentatively, choosing vague words that would not stab the wound in her heart to produce tears again.

"In what way?" He asked her.

"The consequences." Hermione simply answered.

"You think you can't have children, don't you?" Draco affirmed, clicking the joints of his knuckles before continuing, "Are you really that desperate to have one? Do you think having a baby will solve your problems?"

"Agh," Hermione sighed, shaking her head, trying to deliberate on an answer before looking at him, "It's not that..."

Draco frowned, wondering if she knew the real reason why she could not conceive, "Tell me then."

Her eyes met his and each saw themselves reflected in the pupils of the other. Hermione looked away.

"It was just one night," Hermione began, tracing the branches of a small dead tree with her forefinger before looking at him again, "You and I." She turned her attention to the branches again, picking a small yellow snail from the very end, "When you left it was insult to injury. And everything that happened after was insult after insult after insult."

Draco remained silent. Feeling embarrassed by the direct truth uttered, Hermione placed the yellow snail in a nearby bush and looked directly at him as she leaned against the trunk of a hibernating tree, "I don't regret having the abortion, but my biggest failing is that I made the mistake of being involved with you."

Draco smiled, "Yet you saved my life, Granger."

"And you witnessed the death of my parents and watched as Bellatrix crucio'd me to an inch of my life, Malfoy." Hermione snapped back, feeling the February air bite at her fingers and nose.

"You know I had little choice in that matter. I tried to look out for you whenever possible. When the war was finally brought back to Hogwarts, I…!" Draco gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. He hated being such a confessing animal; this particular secret was only ever meant to be echoed in his head. He shook his head, stopping himself from complicating matters even further.

Hermione frowned, "What're you on about? You contributed nothing to the battle of Hogwarts. Your mother –"

"Crabbe." Draco interrupted. If he'd buggered his pants, he might as well take them off and do a proper job of it.

Hermione stared at him confused at first; his silence provoked her to rummage through insignificant memories. It took a minute or so to find the particular point in history Draco referred to. She couldn't even remember Crabbe's face; only sounds, utterances, panic.

"_What's the diff – It's that Mudblood! Avada Kedavra!"_

"_Don't!" Malfoy screamed._

She thought Crabbe's remark was that, a simple remark. And then she realised. Subtext; there is something in the air that is never spoken but always implied.

"How the fuck did he find out?"

"Too long to get into," Draco muttered trying to gain strength over the truth serum, ashamed of his slip-up. Again, there was always subtext and he still hated himself for teaching Crabbe how to conjure Fiendfyre in a bid for his silence, knowing he would never give Crabbe help in controlling it. When Draco taught him the method, he knew he meant for Crabbe to die, "Let's just say I was no Snape, but there were so many things I did for your sake, whether I was successful or not."

Hermione remained sceptical; being sceptical was like having a comfortable iron ribcage to clamp over her heart, "It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change the past."

"But it must redeem the present," Draco uttered, letting the truth serum invade the faculties of his mind again.

**000000000000**

_All those small actions must be enough to redeem the past, it must be_, Draco desperately thought, pleading with the God inside his head. Draco wasn't religious in the slightest, but he tried to hold a united faith in himself, in the opportunities life sometimes provided.

_Or do I divide and pull apart?_

_Because my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark._

He felt as if there was an inner battle within the crevices of his soul; as if the battle between good and evil internalised itself within his body and he just wasn't sure what side he was on anymore. For Draco, Everyone was born to occupy a certain place beyond the leylines that stood between Heaven and Hell. Some were born to greatness, like Potter and Voldemort. Some were born to die, _never knowing the difference, never knowing why_.

Should he have been born to die? Draco felt as if he had defied his place in the world and travelled across the leyline as he did the ancient Ridgeway, running from one land to another, breaking some divine law. He felt as if his punishment was the same as Cain's; eternal anguish and restlessness. Always homesick for a place and time he would never find.

He looked over to Hermione who was absentmindedly picking the skin around her thumb using her forefinger as she steered down into another lane. Draco opened his hands slightly so as to not draw attention from her and looked down to see them lightly stained with what was left from the oxidised blood.

_And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?_

**000000000000**

Hermione groaned, clasping the back of her thighs. She forgot how much hill-walking exhausted her. The grey clouds began to darken as if someone was painting a watercolour horizon overhead, one brushstroke of grey layered on top of another. Hermione frowned.

"We'd best make our way back to the car," She called across to Draco. He was busy sifting through a field of demolished crops of sweet corn, trying to see if he could tiptoe across the row of butchered stems. Hermione had barely spoken a word since he confessed his part in Crabbe's death, so after a mile of silent trawling, he angrily stormed off in a nearby field, forcing her to follow.

"Malfoy, did you hear me?" She called out, walking to close the distance between them.

He jumped off the sturdy cut stalks and walked towards a stretch of land that consisted of small rocks and fine dust of chalk. He picked up a chalk rock and flung it as far as he could, wondering if it would land on the green grass.

"Malfoy!" She shouted, tugging on his sleeve.

He rolled his eyes and pushed her hand away, "I heard the first time, Granger."

"Honestly, sometimes I really fucking regret ever meeting you."

The lower part of Draco's face metamorphosed its properties to produce an expression between a humoured grimace and a filthy scowl; "You don't regret me, Granger dearest. I don't care how many times you have to lie to yourself in the mirror about it or how much you blame me for the misery in your life; you certainly do not regret me – the same way I do not regret you."

Hermione shook her head and ignored the outburst, "Come on, then," She exhaled, but before a half-step was taken, she stopped and pushed her palm to Draco's chest behind her.

"What the –"

"Shh," She whispered, not looking back, "Look over there, it's a fox."

Seeing a fox was hardly exciting for Draco. He found himself more interested in how he still managed to feel some warmth from her palm against his thrice-covered chest. He slowly brought his right hand to cover hers, the warming sensation now tingling. _The picture_, Draco reminded himself. His upper eyelids lowered. If he was a synaesthesiac, he would probably have seen the sensation as a burst of gold and red colour, dancing as though they were leaves in autumn.

Hermione turned to face him, feeling his hand upon hers. She tried to jerk her hand away from the fleshy prison walls, but Draco held tightly on.

"Your hand is surprisingly warm," He said, matter-of-factly.

"Thank you. Can I have my hand back?"

He let go and her hand breathed cold air once more.

"Remember when you tricked me into drinking Veritaserum?" He asked, following her into a thicket of barren trees.

"Why do you bring that up?" She asked as she pushed a vicious branch out of the way.

"I took some earlier. I found it in your kitchen cupboard this morning." He said, handing her the half-empty bottle.

Hermione took the bottle away from him, "Veritaserum is impossible to detect," She shrugged.

"So take some and see for yourself," Draco offered, hoping she would so this experiment in truth could be extended.

Hermione shook her head, "No."

"Why?" He asked, snapping the weak branch of a tree nearby in frustration.

"Because you are the gizzards of Pandora's Box." She answered softly, "Even if you'd taken five million drops of truth serum, I'd still have my doubts to the honesty of your statements."

"Then you just have to hope as I do." Draco replied.

Hermione sighed and bit her lip gently. She was not afraid of what the serum would reveal, having known the truth since the day Draco left her bed. He watched intently as Hermione loosely swivelled the contents of the bottle.

She opened the bottle and tipped the contents onto the ground below.

"I'm not playing this game…" She said.

Draco closed his eyes whilst pursing his lips.

"Because I told you the truth earlier." He opened his eyes to her, "When you left it felt insult to injury. You took all my rationalisations, all the formulas I relied on to make sense of the world – and in the space of twenty minutes, you systematically destroyed each and every crutch. You enjoyed every second of it, didn't you?"

"Yes." He simply replied, remembering her face divided between frown and open-mouthed pleasure. It was like watching St Theresa burst to life from her stone marbled place. She looked every part a renaissance sculpture made flesh.

"But you must realise when you took each crutch I relied heavily upon, you left me falling six million miles into the bowels of this Earth." Hermione explained, "You didn't give me a map or key so I was able to ladder myself out of the abyss."

"What did you feel?" She asked.

"I felt something for you. I cared about you." He answered truthfully, having long rid the option of obscuring the truth from her.

Hermione dropped the bottle to the ground carpeted with dead leaves, leaving her hands free to cup his cheeks. It was a spontaneous moment of affection, much like the first time she awkwardly hugged him in the woods. She just needed to touch a living human being, to know she was still alive as well. He held her hands with his own and pulled them behind his neck so as to reel her body against his. As he leaned in to kiss her, she turned away. Draco was undeterred, leaving unripe buds of small kisses against her jaw line and down the side of her neck.

"I still care about you," He murmured, sliding his right hand underneath her brown coat, looking to warm his fingers against the small of her back. Hermione flinched from the cold instantly, causing her body to involuntarily push against Draco's. She would be lying if she said she stopped desiring him throughout the years that had passed by. There had been nights where she had remembered that passionate night and wanted him again and again, having never felt the right mixture of desire and involvement since.

Draco's left hand sneaked its way into the space between her jeans and stomach, she gritted her teeth. His hands were freezing. Her breath faltered bouts of fog into the air as his middle finger reached the crux of her clit. He put pressure on the bud by pressing down upon it, and repeatedly rubbing his finger left to right, encouraging it to engorge around him.

Hermione closed her eyes, letting her head fall back as he pushed his hand down to cup her entire genitalia. Draco licked the fuller part of his lip with the bottom of his tongue as he watched her lips move from vowel shape to pout; he ran his middle finger from just underneath her clit to the puckered hole of her anus. The lower part of his thumb up to his wrist was completely wet. Hermione's arms were tight around his shoulders and neck and he pulled his right hand from the small of her back to unzip his jeans. He wanted to hear his first name spilt from her lips again.

It was the shriek of a crow that brought her back to reality, shocking her to open her eyes wide and pull Draco's hand out of her jeans. He stood there with his fingers on the zip and the other hand tersely held in front of him.

"We can't," Hermione said, feeling her pussy pulse aftershocks. It was as though someone had set electric shocks through it in order for the heart of it to pump blood again, and now it was vigorously doing so.

She could not allow herself to do this all over again.

"Why?" He asked.

She tilted her chin upward slightly to signal his left hand. Draco sighed; his cock was throbbing and hurt against the confines of underwear and jeans. He looked down and saw his left hand was smeared with her blood. Hermione's cheeks turned red from embarrassment as she leant down to pick up the bottle off from the ground.

It unnerved him, but not enough to stop him from what he wanted, "I really don't care, Hermione." He said. Draco wondered what satisfaction he would get from pulling out his cock to watch it drip with blood; a true sword finding its place in a fleshy wound, perhaps. He winced at the thought, not because it disgusted him, but because it disgusted him that the thought strengthened his cock that little bit more.

Hermione shook her head, "No, we really can't. We need to go back anyway." She said curtly, angry she had let it carry on that far. It was as if she underestimated her feelings for him completely.

"Okay," Draco relented, wiping his hand against a nearby tree. Though he wanted her, he did not want to force himself upon her. He felt as if Hermione would already punish him enough with her barriers in exchange the small intimacy she had just allowed then. She was impossible.

"Do you still love me?" He boldly asked her as she power-walked through the thicket in front of him.

She snorted, knowing the question was more a sulking insult than real question, "Malfoy – always adding insult to injury… I think I did love you." She said as twilight spun and darkness fell, "And I'm not sure if it was love or just lust, but in any case, the result just left me lost… And I cannot let you do that to me again."

**000000000000**

_And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?_

Draco bit the inside of his lip to try keep himself from falling asleep. He could not help it though; the exhaustion fell upon him like some thick smog. Each time his eyes closed, he would see Walburga's portrait smile at him. Her smile was unsettling, the pink of her lips contrasting with the ivory fullness of her cheeks and her jet black hair.

_We all got wood and nails_

_And we turn out hate in factories_

She was a dark Mona Lisa.

Her portrait paralysed Draco every time the smog fell upon his eyes, closing them to her mercy. And she continued to smile on, serenely warning him that she would be coming after him whilst he slept inside the machine.


	8. The Killing Curse

Apologies for taking so long to write this chapter! Pablo Neruda says it better than I ever could:

_If you should ask me where I've been all this time,  
I have to answer "Things happen" _(There's No Forgetting)

**

* * *

**

**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Eight: The Killing Curse**

"Do you think my mother may have penned this letter herself?" Draco asked with a half-smile, setting down the pen upon the table. His hand was aching from trying to transcribe Hermione's flurrying thought processes as she pifcked apart the letter rune by rune. Though he smiled as he asked the question, he was quite serious nonetheless.

Hermione pulled the charmed reading glasses up into her hair, hooking it behind her ears as though it was a headband, pushing a quiff together in the space between the two lenses. The cold light of the sun quickly danced in her eyes having no more obstruction from her thick hair. Draco felt as though he was looking into a stained-glass window when he peered into her irises.

"No," She answered after a brief pause, "the letter has too much of Regalus imprinted onto it."

Draco waited for a further explanation, but she shrugged and offered none.

"So what's the point of it then?" He asked petulantly, flicking the metal pen so it rolled heavily across the coffee table.

She stopped the pen with her hand, hating the way it sounded as it propelled forward; the sound far too ominous and threatening. Draco did not make any gesture to apologise. It had been a week since she had taken him to 12 Grimmauld Place. They had kept their interaction cold and professional since the incident on the ancient Ridgeway, each ashamed by their actions to speak of it openly. Despite the embarrassment, nothing had been said of Draco returning to stay with Blaise.

Hermione would have to speak to Blaise about it later on, hoping the inspection went as smoothly as it had done six months ago. She needed Draco out of her house, lest she be found by their shared past. Their past seemed to resemble the shadow of a panther as it roamed around the house. It sniffed their most intimate memories, hoping to re-live the sensations through their tender skin. So far Hermione had evaded the shadow well enough, but the close proximity left her wanting him as she had done years ago.

But Hermione meant what she said; she could not allow it to happen again.

"Well then?"

"I don't really know… On the surface, this just seems to be a document about blood status and inheritance…" She said whilst flicking through the notes Draco had taken.

"And beneath?"

Hermione took her own notepad and skimmed through the notes, "Well Regalus seems to utilise the Elder Futhark runic alphabet, which isn't that ancient, earliest use was reported around 400 AD. Each rune has a corresponding sound as well as an assigned meaning. Take _Kenaz_ for example: it is represented by the surface drawing of a 'less than' mathematical sign which stands for a 'k' sound. It traditionally meant a torch, but this is taken representative of the underlying meanings of enlightenment and possession of knowledge."

"Right," Draco yawned. Her mouth tightened into a sharp line and her eyebrows knitted together in reaction. Again, he felt no need to apologise.

Nothing save her mouth relaxed as she opened it, "So when I read this letter, it made no sense in both the visual meanings and metaphorical meanings when translated across. And it should do, unless… I don't know… Regalus was playing some big practical joke."

Draco groaned, holding his head in his hands, the fleshy part of his palms pressing against his eyes as he bunched some of his hair around his reaching fingers in an attempt to massage the knotted skin moulded over the top of his skull.

"I'll dig him out from the Underworld and have him die a second time if that's the case." He darkly muttered.

Hermione rubbed her chin with her fingers, "I doubt it is the case, though. From what we discovered trying to destroy horcruxes, Regalus seemed only to hold contempt for Voldemort, no one else."

"This is fucking doing my head in," He pushed the seat back, dragging the legs of the chair into the linoleum, "Do you want a cup of tea?"

"Umm, no, I'm due in work soon, remember?" She said whilst grabbing a red apple from the fruit bowl that decorated the table.

Her house was decorated with such details that served only to be functional and practical. _Far different to her parents' house_, Draco thought as he dropped a tea bag into the freshly watched mug. The sudden comparison made him feel uneasy, unable to understand why the images of the Granger residence came to mind. The tea seeped out from the confines of its bag resembling clotted blood oozing out of a gaping wound.

Draco frowned at the sight.

Walburga had caught him in the machine after all. He had been plagued by nightmares since Hermione took him to 12 Grimmauld Place. It was as if some of the gothic substructure had fragmented and a lethal shard had flung itself into the heart of his mind's eye. In his nightmares Walburga's portrait would taunt him as it followed Draco to an impressive alter of glittering black stones. As he approached the heart of the alter he saw his father's head was spiked on a platinum pole and placed behind the lectern. Its eyes were closed, and the body of the head lolled to the side as if it was pulled upon the spike in gleeful haste. Draco tried to step back in an attempt to run from the grotesque display before him, but Walburga's portrait pushed him forward like a wall closing him in on himself.

A black-haired gaunt adolescent invaded the space with his rich garments and artefacts of royalty which decorated his head and neck; a strange bundle of striking white cotton was also held in the crux of his left arm. He was Regalus. And Draco immediately knew the white cotton enclosed the body of his child. He pleaded with Regalus for its safety, but the sound that passed through his lips was that of gurgles. Regalus laughed loudly at this, taking a blood-stained crown from the base of the lectern and crowned Draco. The gaunt boy was almost in tears from manic laughter as he pushed Draco upon an uncomfortable dark throne and presented him with the white bundle of cloth.

Regalus slowly unwrapped the gift of pure white cotton.

No matter how hard he tried to stop himself from looking, Draco's eyes were transfixed onto the unmoving child as it was slowly revealed to him piece by bloody piece. A mess of strangulation and clotted blood. Its skin tinged by soft pastel blues.

Draco shuddered at the memory of such unnatural colour, not hearing the water came to boil.

"Do you mind if I brew a batch of dreamless sleep potion?" He asked, pulling out a cigarette from a box that lay on the kitchen counter.

"You can't run away from your nightmares." Hermione half-smiled looking down at the apple she held in her left palm, rubbing the smooth skin of the apple with her thumb.

"I'm not running, just hiding."

"Come by the bookshop for midday; get out of this house for a while?" Hermione offered.

"Patronising suggestion there, Granger."

She shrugged, his comment didn't decline the invitation, "Blaise wants to see you. He'll be there around one o'clock. Just apparate to the office; I'll make sure no one comes in."

He tiredly nodded whilst lighting up his first cigarette of the day.

**000000000000**

Hermione bit the inside of her cheek and only Blaise noticed small knotted ropes of veins that momentarily surfaced past the skin of her neck. Ginny was oblivious. Too busy trying to uncurl her little finger from the grasp of the infant's chubby fist.

"He's got some hold, hasn't he?" Ginny cooed whilst using her foot to pull James Sirius' pram out of the way so a couple could walk past. Hermione hummed acknowledge as she scrawled down some numbers in the ledger's book, only allowing herself one fleeting look at the black-haired babe Ginny cradled close to her winter coat. She breathed deeply whilst lowering her eyes back to the imaginary order she was in the process of pencilling, but found she could not write any more lies to hide the avalanche of discomfort that pressured against her heart.

She tightly gripped the pencil. Again, only Blaise noticed.

'Harry says he'll make an amazing seeker,' Ginny continued, smiling brightly. Hermione met her gaze and whatever genuine smile she was about to offer was pushed into some dark wilderness by Ginny's growing Cheshire grin. Blaise knew Ginny's gaiety was something that easily isolated Hermione.

He also knew she was always uncomfortably rigid around children; especially babies and toddlers, staring intensely at the top of their bobbing heads as they weaved in and around her legs. Everyone laughed it off, mangling her in the image of McGonnagoll: teacher first and maternal figure second. It would be no better if they knew, Blaise concluded. Her discomfort would wrongly be regarded as a sign of rightful moral punishment in the hypocritical Wizarding Community that strangely found no problem in disowning Squibs.

"Hermione," Blaise said, making his presence known. He nodded in Ginny's direction, but she protectively held her child, obscuring the baby's face from Blaise. _As expected_. He was respected as well as could be of a man who was part of the Slytherin House in the run up to the war. His subsequent success was met with some distrust that was always _politely_ discussed behind his back.

"I'll wait downstairs then?"

Hermione nodded, "Yeah, I'll see you in a minute."

He walked across the shop and through the door that led to the stairs, but managed to catch Ginny's reproachful comment before disappearing.

"I can't believe you still talk to him, Hermione. You know what they found in their office the other d –"

He shook his head. _Forget it_, he told himself with resignation as he entered the office. Ginny had always been wary of Blaise's place in Hermione's life because she couldn't see how a close friendship had been forged.

"You alright?" A figure asked taking a seat next to the filing cabinet.

"Yeah," He nonchalantly replied, leaning over to pull the box of cigarettes from the top pocket of Draco's jacket.

After all, Blaise had been so insignificant during the bulk of their Hogwarts years, it made others question to what extent he and Hermione were just friends. To what extent he played a part in Hermione and Ron's separation as well.

Draco was ready to pass him a lighter, but Blaise shook his head and used his wand instead.

Blaise's part had only sewn one single kiss on that tapestry.

"Is she coming down soon?" Draco asked.

Blaise looked into his eyes. _If only they knew how you had spun your colour right through her well before patterns could be established with anyone else_.

"Yeah, she's just speaking to Potter's wife." Blaise said, doing his best to shake off the bad feeling he was ill-accustomed to.

"How's the inspection going?" He asked.

"Bad. Every six months they toss my life on badly-kept inventories and scrap memos, spinning one rumour after another to try destroy what little reputation I have left in this community…" Blaise paused, rubbing the space between eyebrow and hairline, "… I grow weary of it. Maybe I should have run too."

Draco pulled over a mug with dregs of tea leaves in it still. Peering down, he remembered how much he hated Trelawney's lessons, but could not help but try identify shapes out of the dirge presented. No shapes could be made out of the black mess. He flicked some ash into it instead.

"You wouldn't suit exile." He rebutted softly.

"I'm of Russian descent on my mother's side. It is in my blood to be exiled… but only with the finest robes and a good monthly income," Blaise chuckled and then stopped, "Why did you refuse the money and security; the offer the Ministry made you?"

"I'd rather have my freedom, however scant that is."

"Any grief from Goyle yet?" Blaise steadily moved the conversation on.

"Nothing. She keeps me hidden with her magic. It'll be a while before he finds me again." Another load of ash joined the dregs of the cup.

"Draco, there's another reason why the Ministry make my life hell…"

The blonde-haired man looked up, "What?"

"I saw a document I wasn't supposed to. They don't give a fuck about Goyle –"

"Well that's easy enough to deduce anyway," Draco interrupted.

"They give him an allowance to find those Slytherins who ran like you did. He is their mercenary; he does the dirty work and they take the credit, fooling everyone in the process, even the aurorers."

Silence followed.

"Parkinson?" Draco finally asked. It was him who had convinced her to run.

"The Ministry effectively killed her. Cut a deal with Goyle and the remaining free Death Eaters to kill her as they pleased for her betrayal to Voldemort. Goyle's so fucking stupid, he doesn't realise when they've weeded out all the traitors and undesirables he will be next to the chopping block."

"It's too outrageous to be – … Are you serious?" He asked in a low voice.

"It's what I saw." Blaise affirmed.

"What'd you see?" Hermione asked as she locked the door behind her.

The two men looked at her as she waited for an explanation.

"Nothing." Blaise finally answered. He had revealed the information to Draco because he had nothing to lose by knowing of it. If she knew the truth she would take immediate action and both knew Hermione had everything to lose. "Did you manage to get Ginny to leave?" He asked casually.

"She was only saying hello. Harry was waiting for her outside, wanted to take the babe to the Zoo." Hermione shrugged, "Are you going to tell me what you were talking about?"

"No, Granger." Draco scowled, struggling with the weight of what had been revealed.

"Secrets." She muttered under her breath.

"Like you didn't have some of your own." Draco quietly murmured in turn.

Before Hermione could act on the sudden anger she felt, a scream was heard from upstairs.

Draco looked to Blaise, "But you're neutral! You had no part in the War!"

"What the fuck are you on about? Who is upstairs" Hermione shouted.

"They're here for me." Blaise explained, "It was only going to be a matter of time."

"Who?" Hermione asked frantically as she unlocked the door.

The draft that came from behind the opened door paralysed them in the greatest of grief. As if death had laid a hand on their shoulder.

"Dementors," Draco breathed.

"Turn." Blaise whispered.

Draco complied, changing into a white fox and hid himself in the corner of the room.

Though the Dementors did not enter the room first, their presence was strongly felt. Their scent of destruction squashed any smell of cigarettes that were smoked only five minutes prior.

"Hello Zabini." A voice greeted cheerfully.

"G-Goyle!" Hermione barely managed to stutter.

Goyle's big frame was unchanged by the five years that had passed. Only his eyes had changed, turning black as he leered.

"Well, a death of one of the old members of the DA would suit me nicely as well."

"_Stupefy_!" The peace that reigned after the war had not dulled Hermione's shrewd sense of defence.

Neither did it affect Goyle's ability to manoeuvre away from the aimed spell as he instantly weaved away from it and kicked Hermione to the ground. Her wand was knocked out of her reach.

Another curse was aimed for Goyle, this time from Blaise. It hit his shoulder and pushed him against the doorframe. Goyle snarled from the pain.

"Not her." Blaise warned, "After all, they'll definitely kill you for breaking your contract."

Goyle winced, "So you know?"

"Isn't that why you're here?"

Goyle smiled, "So shall we get this over with?"

"As you wish." Zabini said, dropping his wand.

Goyle pointed his wand to Zabini's head.

Blaise closed his eyes.

"_Avada Kedavra_."

**000000000000**

"Hermione?" Harry implored, holding her hand in his own.

She slowly opened her eyes, struggling with the amount of sleep that had settled itself between her eyelids. They had welded her eyes behind doors as if her body did not ever want her to wake again.

"Mione," He sighed, tightening his hold, "Merlin above."

"Where am I?" Hermione asked; her chest hurting. She took her hand away from his grasp and wiped the sludgy crusts away from her sight. She looked at him slowly slip into focus, his black hair sharpening and his glasses reflecting the shape of the light fixture in the ceiling above.

"St. Mungo's." He replied, unwrapping a block of chocolate and snapping off two little pieces into her hand. She did not eat them.

"What happened?"

"Do you not remember?"

"Only bits and pieces. Walking down the stairs to speak to Blaise in my office. Dementors. Getting the air kicked out of my lungs by Goyle." She recounted in an attempt to remember specific details; details that were as sharp and focused as Harry appeared to her at that moment. But they did not come.

"Goyle was there. The Dementors that were sent after him… they attempted to attack you and Zabini by mistake." He tried to explain, thinking it was better to omit certain details from her for the time being.

"Oh God, Harry – Blaise. Is he okay? Where is he?" She asked sitting upright, her head woozy in the shift from horizontal to vertical.

"Do you not remember?" Harry asked, worried.

"Tell me where he is."

"People ran into the streets screaming just as we were about to apparate. I ran to your shop, all the way down the stairs –"

"Harry, please." Her eyes welled up.

"I could feel them there, you know how their scent lingers on… Do you honestly not remember what happened?" Harry asked, full of concern.

"He's dead isn't he?"

Harry shook his head and brought Hermione's hand to his lips, kissing the base of her thumb affectionately. "He's dead."

She did not hear his words, only the breath of his statement as it fluttered against her skin.

Her face creased toward the middle as tears cascaded down her cheeks.

"You did it." He said. "There's obviously an investigation pending due to the misuse of magic, but it doesn't matter. I'll make sure it goes smoothly as possible."

Hermione took her hand away from his and the tight creased pit of her facial features spread out again. Her eyes were wide open. She looked horrified.

"What?"

"You killed him."

She shook her head, "No…"

"Yeah!" He smiled, a tear falling down his own cheek, "Merlin, Mione. I was so scared that we'd lost you. But I came down those stairs and there was your little otter to greet me. And I knew that it was okay. I don't know how you managed to have your patronus last as long as it did, with you just passed out and your wand fallen from your hand, but it was there…"

She frowned in confusion, "What?"

"Hermione, we had to check your wand to make sure. Both the killing curse and patronus was cast from your wand. You killed Goyle and warded off the Dementors."

She brought her hands to her face and sobbed, unable to believe it all, "Me?"

Harry stroked her hair, "Well, who else could produce that otter I became so well acquainted with during DA meetings?"


	9. Aletheia

Sorry for the long wait. See if you can find the songs Nineteen (Smog) and Seconds (Pulp) in this chapter. Lethe is the river of forgetting in Greek mythology and was featured in Keats' 'Ode to Melancholy' poem, among many other poems which are worth reading. Aletheia means 'truth' or 'unforgetfulness'. Foundations for the next chapter.

* * *

**One of Two Planets Dancing**

**Nine: Aletheia**

Draco hesitated, fingers unable to make contact with the brass doorknob. It would only take a quarter-turn to the right of his wrist and a gentle push, but he could not bring himself to perform those necessary actions. Wary of what the door would reveal, what the consequences of such a discovery would entail.

He drew back his hand as two healers walked by: their light-hearted sniggering calming down to a quiet chuckle upon seeing Draco. The bridge of Hermione's reading spectacles slipped down his nose and he grumbled pushing them back up, realising he had transfigured a poor disguise to come here.

"You're not a reporter are you?" One of the healers asked suspiciously. She was very young, eager to strictly adhere to the procedures of St. Mungo's hospital.

"No," he replied, holding up his empty damp palms, "Just a friend."

"Oh, stop acting like the security staff and leave the poor man alone, Joan." The other smiled, "You can see he means no harm." She was a middle aged woman whose whole history could be traced within the wrinkles that decorated her eyes.

Joan was still not entirely convinced; she had been given strict orders to ensure the ward was free from any journalists scrounging the rooms for a quick story. Her grades from Hogwarts were not good enough to secure a full training post as a Healer, but she was allowed to work a probationary year period, after which the Head staff would evaluate her work and tell her whether or not she would be trained further. The other healer was more relaxed about such hospital guidelines, realising the security raked out such reporters well enough. She was not paid enough to care past that.

"Joan, come on now, what were you saying about your birthday – are you going to have a party then?" The older woman implored, pulling the blue sleeve of the other so they could continue walking to the next ward to change the sheets.

Joan's eyes brightened at the mention of her upcoming birthday, but she could not easily forget how misplaced the spectacled visitor looked, "How did you feel being nineteen years old?" She suddenly asked Draco. The elder sighed, but did not let go of Joan as she marched through the hallway.

"_So relieved to be beating twenty._" Draco answered, the shadow of a sad smile playing upon his face. Every year after the age of sixteen was just another year in that unholy wilderness.

The year he turned seventeen was an especially bad year, the seasons unforgivable. He remembered a lonely winter. Then again, they always were. Draco was alone in a dirty, dark flat, staring out of the wide window. The scene that stretched out before his little eyes left him feeling breathy. Through the cold air, his sigh echoed. The midnight sky swept above the whole city and there were no stars, no stars; just streetlights which seemed to push out from the ground beneath like tulip buds. The moon disappeared from time to time, her face sometimes hiding behind the hands of some thick obstructing clouds.

The war was in within weeks of its death throes, Draco could feel it. After spending the last six months quietly subverting orders, all that was left to do was to keep himself hidden until Potter fulfilled his own destiny by ending the infamous legacy of Voldemort's.

He didn't turn away from the window when he fumbled around for the bottle of malbec he misplaced a moment beforehand. Draco couldn't bring himself to flick the switch on and went on searching with his hands. The dingy lighting from the evening outside was what he had been familiar with for the last month or so, and to breach that with such harsh light would unsettle him.

To be merry as the Christmas decorations that were scattered outside seemed pointless to Draco. He didn't have the energy to first of all talk himself into the process of being joyful. Happiness rarely befriended loneliness, _but with a good bottle of red wine, she's a whore you can buy for the night_, he silently reasoned.

"Accio bottle," He commanded, giving up on his hands to retrieve the lost item. His ears snatched pieces of songs and merry conversations from the surrounding flats, but as they passed through the silent walls of the room, the muggle talk spoke became dismembered and singers sounded as though they were underwater. Both words and melodies unrecognisable, undecipherable to him.

He sighed again, pushing the bottle to his lips. Looking out from the window, he could see the streets looked just about as empty as he felt. A few cars travelled down the road and an even scarcer amount of people walked the pavements drunkenly. He flicked his fingers through his hair and rested his head on his hand, still staring intently at the street below.

And that was when he spotted her.

She didn't quite fit into the picture; completely out of place, yet somewhat familiar. Draco disliked the combination; the sense of uncanny: it made his heart shrink in the corner, as if it expected to be wounded again. He pressed the tip of his nose against the window as she leant on a wall on the opposite side of the street, looking lost and cold. His breath formed a fog which thickly lathered its essence on the glass. Draco quickly wiped it away for fear of losing sight of her. He didn't understand why at a time like this he would want to run down the flights of stairs, out of the doors and bring her inside as though she was a stray cat.

He tried to be nonchalant, but it had been a long time since he had spoken to any person. His loneliness provoked self-pity and the immense longing to have a meaningful conversation and intimate moments with someone.

And she looked like _his_ kind of someone.

She shivered, bundling her arms around her and buried her chin into the collar of her coat. Her hat was flimsy and proves of little use for insulation. She looked up the block of flats and to his window, but Draco wasn't afraid of her intrusive glance and he stayed transfixed as ever. He knew she couldn't see him for the darkness.

A few wisps of her hair began to float away with the fragile wind, but she bound them back behind her ear. She yawned and sighed, producing a thick mist of her own air which obstructed any clean view of her.

And just like a magic act, she disappeared. Draco's eyes had been too focused on the pearly air.

He did not bother to run after her. He didn't believe in settling for second-best even if that was the best he was going to get.

**0000000000**

When Hermione turned nineteen, her heart still painfully wept, still raw and wounded by the serrated blade of loss after loss.

"_So she washed her cut in the sink, and picked up once more._" Blaise's voice never really betrayed what he felt on the inside, nonetheless, if you knew him well enough you would come to realise that there was a softness there that lingered in the air once he had finished speaking.

Hermione curled her feet so both the tops and the fleshy bottom of toes lightly brushed back and forth against the fabric of navy blue sofa. Her arms held her knees close to her chin and her eyebrows inclined toward one another as she frowned.

"Then what? What happens next?" She asked when Blaise spoke no further.

"That's where that particular story ends, I'm afraid." He replied, closing the book and setting it on the floor beside the coffee table.

"I don't like ambiguous endings like that." Hermione commented, uncurling herself out of the tight hold she had held herself in. Her knees hurt from being released so suddenly.

"I don't mind them: there's something about an ambiguous ending that's comforting for me."

"What's comforting about it?" She didn't like loose ends, the uncertainties.

"An ambiguous end is only the middle of a story, really. You stop reading what the author thinks and route the story using your own compass."

He sat at the other side of the sofa, his posture still impeccable; the line of his back perpendicular and hovering well away from touching the skin of the furniture. Hermione thought he looked like some knight's kestrel. Dark and wise, sitting on the highest branches of a tree and looking down upon a world that was his to freely observe.

Hermione tried to observe him in the manner she supposed he observed her. She deduced he was dark, but she assumed he was purer than she would ever be; she had been caught and tainted by that first bleed that was impossible to stem two years on. She was tired of Blaise telling her not to think of the child lost, as if it was a huge inconvenience to hear. He was capable of being icy cold about it sometimes. Blaise was the only one who was clever enough to successfully put the puzzle pieces together though, so it was only in his company she could ever speak freely, train herself to be as indifferent as he was.

"I didn't think you were the type to think of it that way." It was a stupid remark to make, and poorly constructed. What she meant to say was 'I didn't think you were that imaginative', then again, that was too blunt.

Blaise heard past the euphemism anyway, "House of Slytherin, how else do you expect us to lie so well? We _thrive _on imagination." He rebutted, leaning over to pick up his silver cigarette case.

She scoffed, "Nice way of glorifying deceit."

He lit his cigarette with the end of his wand and accio'd a beautifully crafted glass ashtray to sit on the arm-rest beside him. Blaise refused to belittle himself by responding to her tame insult.

"If you have such an imagination, why do you believe love can't be invented?" She persisted; the silence that occurred in the company of Blaise was still uncomfortable, not as it was with Draco. He made the silences easy, and she couldn't understand why two similar boys could manipulate their surroundings to produce such different colours in the heart.

Blaise rubbed the back of his hand, his richly coloured hand was still bright and illuminate past the gathering mist of his cigarette. He was proud of his skin; he likened himself to Alexander Pushkin. He never revealed anything of his past, but he found himself telling Hermione how much his aunts disliked him as a child, pulling on his plump lower lip that shaped a mouth she did not recognise to be of her own bloodline.

_Too influenced by muggles_, both his father and mother would comment shaking their heads when Blaise asked. He reasoned it was because of his aunt he discarded the cultural ancestry of his mother's native Russia until he was well past puberty and able to intellectualise the experience. It was easier to refer to every irrational display of human behaviour with the gloss of academic reading. It was no surprise he asked the hat to place him in Slytherin: a strategic move. Stoicism hid and suffocated his own desires and emotion, but he found himself respecting Hermione as an individual, not enough to free her from his reasoned criticism, but enough to enjoy her when she was around.

Not enough to let himself become infatuated as she had mistakenly allowed herself to be with Draco.

Nevertheless, it was clear to see he was fond of her. Sometimes he felt a yearning to experience that complexity of steam and touch she spoke of, but he would chastise himself when he realised what a fool's game it would turn into. He did not want to be mutilated by standing in the eye of an unpredictable storm as Hermione had been, as those who directly fought in the war had been as well.

He was in correspondence with Malfoy, who had yet to write one sentence of Hermione. Blaise was sure Draco knew of their friendship and concluded if Malfoy ever gave a damn about the woman, he would have had given Blaise a clear warning to keep his distance. The order never came. Then again, there was that tell-tale fleeting moment during Malfoy's trial in which Blaise witnessed the most intense and passionate stare he had ever seen Draco give another person. It was a slight turn of the head in Hermione's direction as she nervously tucked a loose strand behind her ear.

_Fool_, Blaise immediately thought.

How in Merlin's name Malfoy ever managed to convince her to sleep with him, he would never be quite sure. Hermione would occasionally let certain details bleed out, but it was messy and it would be a long time before Hermione would speak of the experience with the remaining torn pages of her own intellectual reasoning.

"What do you think happens to her then?" She asked,

"She sets out to live happily ever after." Blaise sighed. _With Weasel-King of all creature__s_.

He was beyond second rate and twisted out of shape. When Blaise asked her why she found him attractive, Hermione would shrug and say 'he makes me laugh'. Well, if she wanted to laugh then she should go ahead and laugh, he tried to reason with indifference. Sometimes second-best was a best someone could ever get.

"And will she?" Blaise threw a questioning look whilst inhaling, "Will she have a good end, will it be happy?"

He merely exhaled an answer, "Who knows." The smoke briefly fogged Blaise into silhouette, "Whatever happens, she needs to realise life isn't always like how it is in books."

And it was nearly always better that way.

**0000000000**

"I improvised." He answered when she asked him how on Earth he managed to get past the wards and security staff of the building.

The level of security was ridiculous in her opinion. She knew that the hospital was trying to protect the patients from media intrusion; nevertheless it hardly mattered whether or not the media managed to speak to any patients. As ever, the papers would run with a story, based on as many made-up interviews as actual interviews. Whatever sold mass copies whilst propagating a particular opinion of the Ministry's liking.

"Have you seen him yet? I can't travel past the end of the damn hallway without one of them ushering me back. Apparently I should be taking it easy, but they allowed those damn Aurorers to come take statement after statement as if they were ghost-writing my memoirs." Hermione complained.

Draco leaned against the end of the hospital bed, focusing his gaze on how the blanket moulded around her legs that crossed at the ankle. "I haven't seen him yet, but from what I hear, Zabini's fine. Not given his statement yet, but he will do once he knows what story you've given."

"They think it was me… after all, who else could produce my patronus?" She asked, echoing Harry's rhetorical question.

Draco smirked, "Improvisation again."

"How did you even –"

"Oh Granger, you already know the answer, so why even ask?" Draco abruptly replied, finding her confusion patronising, "Out of all the little Dumbledore army members, only _you_ went out by the lake nearly every morning at the crack of dawn to practise your patronus charm."

She tried to think back, but the memory was like pensieve; she could not slip into herself, and instead remembered practising by the lake as if she was in Draco's or somebody else's memory. She bit her lip, wondering why it was so hard to fully relate to those simple times. _Too much war_, that idyllic past had peeled away like shed skin.

"Why an otter, by the way?" He probed.

"Because my grandfather used to read _Wind in the Willows_ as a bedtime story when I went to stay over at his house for the holidays. I liked Otter above all the other animals for some reason or another. I can't remember what exactly..." Hermione trailed off. It sounded such a trivial and insignificant anecdote when said out loud. _What does it all matter now?_

"It obviously still matters to you, Granger. Those are the kind of things you should take hold of and never let go." Draco said, unable to help himself from prying.

Hermione shook her head, "Don't hypocritically preach such tripe because you feel guilty of your past actions, Malfoy." Her arms then folded and her head turned to face the bedside cabinet.

He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling a few hairs out of his skull from frustration "You know, sooner or later you really must know that I did try and I never did mean to do you any harm."

Hermione's voice softened into a resigned sigh as she turned to face him again, "Then why the fuck did you steal away into a five year silence that night?"

Draco lifted his arms and placed both hands on the crown of his skull like a prince who finally surrendered to the firing squad. The weight of his hands was the force of the Ancient Mariner's albatross around his neck.

He closed his eyes, throat suddenly dry and thick.

**0000000000**

"Did she ever speak about me in any detail past those times you kindly shared?" Draco asked Blaise. He had lingered downstairs for an hour, smoking his way through the remaining packet that was left on the coffee table before making his way upstairs to find Blaise reading in his study.

"Fragments." Blaise answered, closing the book, "As if it was a festering wound that had scabbed, but still itched. She'd pick at it sometimes, but then remember it was best left alone to heal over, lest it turned into a bigger scar."

"Did Weasel make her happy?"

"No, not really. Lack of personality, everything he said was dumb, trivial and dull. Breathed too much of her oxygen and stifled her with boredom and domestication."

Draco smiled, "Your words not hers?"

"Obviously."

Draco shook his head, amazed how he had managed to fuck up so badly, "That night I was summoned – that was the night I slept with her. She was such a golden girl, a tight flower bud unwilling to blossom because of duty, and I wanted to save her from all the responsibilities entailed with that particular status…"

He remembered setting down the pen and taking one final look at her body that weaved in and out of the covers before blowing out the candle. Without her clothes, Hermione looked like a leopard in the snow. He did not want to wake her and say goodbye, so he left her in the snow of her bed sheets without her clothes.

"Don't romanticise it too much, Draco." Blaise warned, opening a drawer to take out another packet of cigarettes, "Let's not misguidedly view the past with rose-tinted glasses here. I know how you operated back then: you wanted to teach her a lesson. And let me tell you: for that brief lesson, she really got an education."

"So did I." He rebutted quietly, the next words coming slowly, "She didn't know what she had taken away from me that night…"

**0000000000**

Her grandfather told her when times got hard and when she found herself upset beyond belief, she could always blur her eyes and then she could be anywhere she wanted herself to be. So she closed her eyes tight until the Aurora Lights danced around the dark space, hoping that when she opened her eyes, she'd still see the waves of green light against cerulean night.

Her eyes watered when she opened to see that she was not flying, but had hit the ground and was confined within the small room of a St. Mungo's. Disappointed, she tried to offer a reassuring smile as she rubbed Blaise's hand. Malfoy helped her escape her ward and stood at the back of the room, watching the display of affection. An ember of envy sat in the pit of his stomach and burned.

"Thank you." Malfoy simply nodded in reply to Blaise's gratitude.

Saving Blaise's life and ensuring he would not be accountable for any murder was the least he could do. Then again, when he saw how intimate Blaise and Hermione's friendship had become, he wished he didn't bother. He felt second-best and Snape's words wormed their way into his head: _seconds turn to hours, and the hours turn into days, but still it feels like morning._

"You know that story you read to me years ago, you made that story up, didn't you?" She asked.

Blaise managed a weak smile, "Slytherin nature."

When Hermione said she didn't want to be with him for knowing her, what she meant was that she thought it was unfair to give herself to him as he was second-best. She respected him far too much to lead him along, politely turning away when he kissed her the night before her wedding. Hermione had to preserve the friendship: Blaise had become so much a part of her life; she didn't want it to be sullied by a failed relationship.

When kissed her, it was controlled and courteous.

She turned away from Blaise to face Draco. His intense light irises flooded out under his lowered eyelids as he cocked his head and moved to leave the room. No, that kiss could not erase _his_ kisses: the first time left its trace and everything after slid into second place.

He didn't even know what _he_ had taken away from her that night.

A few stolen petals as she newly blossomed, the smell of her heart and sex, leaving only six pips lodged in the core of her being.

The guards simply laughed: as if that was ever going to be enough to pay the fare for travel into the underworld. She would have to live with her wounds as the pips were not enough to bathe in the river of Lethe. They could only take her to the banks where there was no forgetting.


End file.
